My room is my best friend

Broadcast: Saturday, March 19, 2011 at 12:00 on Nederland 2
Website: www.ntr.nl

My Room Is My Best Friend is a documentary about underage asylum seekers in the Netherlands. Young people with a hidden past and an uncertain future, who suddenly appear in our daily lives and disappear from them again almost unnoticed, while we have hardly any awareness of their 'state of being'.

The documentary is inspired by the 'Landkoffer project', a collaboration between the Amsterdam Public Library, the School of Poetry, and Kunstweb.
The project, which was awarded the first prize by the Evens Foundation for making a sustainable contribution to European integration and development in intercultural education and European social integration, found its way to six European countries and was implemented with great success at the Pollsmoor Youth Prison in Cape Town, South Africa.

During the project, which was carried out in schools, young people created a personal poem in Dutch in which they expressed their dearest memory. They 'packaged' this poem in a small wooden suitcase, painted and decorated, sometimes with photos or small objects inspired by the poem.
By choosing poems as the film's angle, the viewer gains an immediate glimpse into the 'inner world' of the young people. The contrast between their daily reality on the one hand, and their memories of a life they have already lived on the other—written down in their poem in a 'new language'—is often poignant and far from childlike. In this way, the position of displaced youth is highlighted in an unexpected and unique manner, and the word on everyone's lips today—'integration'—takes on a moving, unexpected dimension.

Directed by: Berenike Rozgonyi

This documentary premiered at the Netherlands Film Festival in 2007 and was previously broadcast by RTV West.

Watch the preview here: http://www.ngnprodukties.nl/nl_pages/films/mijnkamer_preview.php



How to respond / more information
You must log in to respond