3 Dutch Documentaries at Thessaloniki

Turn Your Body to the Sun** by Aliona van der Horst and Docmakers is selected in International competition at TDF. In the film a daughter searches for her father’s past in this poetically crafted film, set against the backdrop of World War II and the dictatorships of Hitler and Stalin. Sana Valiulina’s father Sandar was a Red Army soldier who was taken prisoner in Nazi Germany, a fate he shared with five million others. After the war, back in Stalin's Soviet Union, he was sentenced to ten years in a Gulag camp for betraying his country. There he began receiving letters from a young girl, which helped him survive. The film celebrates its European premiere at TDF.

Also screening in International Competition is A Marble Travelogue by Sean Wang (China) and NL co-producer Muyi Film. The film premieres internationally at the festival. In A Marble Travelogue, blocks of white marble from a Greek quarry are shipped to China, where sculptors turn them into Hellenistic-style statues and columns. The leftover grit is processed into souvenirs, which are returned to Europe and sold to Chinese tourists. With a light touch and wry humor, the film portrays a chain along this cyclical marble route, that runs from capital to manufacturing, wholesale, retail, and consumer to meet a variety of human landscapes of a globalization driven by the Chinese economy. Sales are handled by Rediance Films.

Housewitz* by Oeke Hoogendijk and Discours Film celebrates its international premiere in the Film Forward Competition. The documentary analyses the life of Lous Hoogendijk-de Jong (mother of director Oeke), who has not been out of the house for years now. She has a recurring nightmare, which she puts down to the day when as a Jewish girl she was taken from her house and deported to the Nazi camps. What seems perfectly ordinary in this film at first sight - a woman in a living room watching tv with her cat - gradually turns into an oppressive reality where the inside and outside worlds are at odds and housemate Holocaust is a daily presence. Sales are handled by Go2Films.

All three documentaries first screened at IDFA 2021. Thessaloniki Documentary Festival continues until March 20th. For more information, click here.

*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund
**Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund and Production Incentive

Source: SEE NL
Image: Housewitz