Ahmed Aboutaleb

A poignant portrait of a 'mayor in wartime'. The documentary scrutinizes the popular Dutch politician's much-praised approach and also reveals its darker sides. Furthermore, unexpectedly conservative traits of the liberal Muslim Aboutaleb emerge.

Reading relay of the novel 'Oeroeg' by Hella Haasse by eighty well-known and lesser-known Dutch people. Each person reads a page aloud, after which the book is passed on to the next reader. Philip Freriks, news anchor and ambassador for Nederland Leest, opens the reading relay. Director Shireen Strooker concludes it. 'Oeroeg' is Hella Haasse's debut novel from 1948. Haasse tells the story of the friendship between an Indonesian boy and the son of a Dutch administrator at a tea plantation in the Dutch East Indies before the Second World War. Gradually, the two boys grow apart. When the narrator, the Dutch boy, returns to the Indies—which has not yet quite become Indonesia—after studying in Delft, their estrangement turns out to have grown into a chasm. The final sentence reads: "Am I forever a stranger in the land of my birth, on the soil from which I do not wish to be uprooted? Time will tell."

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A down-on-his-luck Rotterdam dock worker struggles to get his financials and family life back on track.

Should the statues of Piet Hein be allowed to remain standing—and if so, with what message? Director Tim van den Hoff humorously portrays the abrasive relationship with our colonial past and the discomfort administrators struggle with as they care for their heritage. The simultaneous restorations of the statue of Piet Hein in his birthplace of Delfshaven, his mausoleum in the Oude Kerk in Delft, and a statue in Matanzas, Cuba (where the Silver Fleet was captured) offer a glimpse into the wondrous world of heritage and hero worship, and show how the myth of Piet Hein still lives on nearly 400 years after his death.