Van der Hoop Filmproducties

Tragicomedy about two brothers who married two sisters, walking the streets of Deventer at night lamenting the fact that each should have married the other one's wife.

Once, the Staatsliedenbuurt neighbourhood in Amsterdam was an autonomous state for squatters, punks and the original inhabitants who united in the 'Woongroep Staatsliedenbuurt'. The city council's authority had eroded to virtually nothing after years of failing housing policy. The neighbourhood took matters into its own hands, which became painfully apparent when Amsterdam's mayor Van Thijn was roughly kicked out of the area at the close of 1984.

'I can't remember the day my dreams started, but I know when my nightmares did.' These are the words of Rodaan Al Galidi, writer, poet, asylum seeker. Years ago, he fled his native Iraq and got locked up for years in various Dutch refugee centres. When his request for asylum is turned down, he goes into hiding in a student room. He keeps poems there that he wrote in Iraq and new, Dutch texts for which he has meanwhile won several awards. Rodaan turns out to be both a charming and melancholy man. He candidly talks about his life, his inspirations and passions.

Jaap Pieters passionately takes photographs and films, mainly on Super8, of the world around him: vagabonds, drunkards, striking incidence of light, the beauty of decay. In this way he has built up an oeuvre that is appreciated by a small group of film lovers all over the world. In his house, he keeps thousands of negatives and films that have never been developed due to chronic lack of money. He also collects anything in which he sees a glimmer, such as bags of sugar from restaurants where he once had ice cream with his parents, books, records, CDs, vases, glasses, be they broken or not. His girlfriend, with whom he has tried in vain to live together for 26 years, comes to helping create some order in the chaos. With his favourite uncle, the poet H.H. ter Balkt, he reminisces. ‘Two autists together’, but above all Jaap continues to film: now elderly men with whom he feels some bond.