Valérie Schuit

Moederliefde

In this documentary we follow 21-year-old Cynthia Stomphorst and her retarted mother for a year. At first sight, Cynthia is a perfectly normal, calm MBO student from Vlaardingen. In practice, she sleeps during the day and is absorbed in games and music at night. Cynthia is no ordinary girl of twenty from Vlaardingen. She is the only one of the Stomphorst family who is normally gifted, and has lived in twelve different places since her infancy: foster families, host families, weekend and crisis families and children's homes. When she is sixteen, she can go to a Assisted Living project. But after a conflict with a roommate, she is forced to move in with her gifted mother. Here she celebrates her 21st birthday. Twenty years ago, Cynthia was the main character in an episode of the TV show Zembla.

In Groove We Trust, A Joe Bowie Experience

How do funky machismo and buddhism go together in one man? This music documentary takes you into the groove of Joseph Bowie and his Defunkt, a major innovator in the history of jazz funk.

Stuff Everywhere

"Stuff Everywhere" is a personal documentary about the connection between people and their stuff. Things are handy, they make life easier and we think they will bring us joy. But they invade our houses, the streets, the sea and our minds. In how we think about ourselves, about the economy and about cubicle space. Stuff Everywhere is a poetical film filled with questions, numbers and searching words.

The Hermitage Dwellers

Focuses on the people who work in Russia's renowned museum, the Hermitage, the former palace of Catherine the Great.

A Sad Flower in the Sand

About a largely unsung writer of the twentieth century: John Fante, the renegade author whose highly autobiographical novels illustrate his deep-rooted love of Los Angeles and his struggles working through poverty and prejudice.

After the Spring of '68

Film about falling in love across a political, cultural and geographic divide. It tells of Simon, a Dutch communist student in Moscow, who meets and marries the Russian Zoya in the spring of 1968. Simon returns to the Netherlands, expecting his wife to follow shortly afterwards when her exit visa is granted. Her application however is refused over and over again. Months pass and then years. A child is born to Zoya in Moscow: director Aliona van der Horst relates her parents' struggle in this tender account of family history caught up in international politics. In the numerous love-letters he wrote to his beloved Zoya feelings of helplessness are expressed: 'Our happiness depends on how the political wind blows'. Van der Horst uses these letters as a guideline through the film. To tell her parents' story, Van der Horst weaves together archival footage, home movies and photographs with contemporary interviews.