Projects
Do I Smell Smoke?
(2022 - 17 minutes) "Do I smell smoke?" is a playful exploration into what is on people’s minds on some of the hottest summer days in Rotterdam. Filmed spontaneously over three days Toto Kersten, Lisette van Oostveen, Merijn van den Brand, and Xaver Könneker collaborated for the first time to engage in a series of interviews with strangers about the joys of their summer behind a backdrop of economic and societal crisis. The conversations range from small talk about holiday plans to anxieties around rising inflation, housing prices, and war to scattered reflections on spirituality, their love of Rotterdam, and the freedom summer promises.
Emissions: Time is the new space, Rotterdam november 2022
010.1.00
(2020 - 1 minute) In collaboration with filmmaker Loes Korten, we made a short film about Rotterdam commissioned by the Rotterdams beeldfonds. Through portraits, the video shows a life cycle of Rotterdammers from 0 to 100 years old in one minute.
Emissions: Rotterdams Beeldfonds 20202, IFFR 2020 RTM Remix
NEGEN TWEE
(2016 - 32 minutes)
How do you live and where do you want to go? In Merijn van den Brand's documentary, he asks these questions of four of his friends who, like him, were born in '92. Dreams, freedom and the confrontation with reality is what he encounters.
Emissions:
NPO Cultura 23 November 2016
Festivals:
NFF 2016 24 & 25 September 2016 Nominatie: Tuschinski
Award
HELEMAAL MELKWEG 8 Oktober 2016
Docfeed 2017 18 Februari 2017 Nominatie: Best National Feature
Rotterdams Open Doek Festival 21 Mei 2017
"The maker is blessed with three sympathetic friends who dare to allow themselves to be filmed, even at moments less glorious or heroic. Detached, in hibernation or in control but alone with their own wise philosophy of life. A compelling, contemporary documentary full of humor and playfulness that deals with big questions in human existence. The film seems to have been given the breath of the boys themselves: dingy but lively, a little sloppy and lazy here and there, then exuberant and sharp again. This film captures the zeitgeist of a young generation at the beginning of their working lives."
- Jury Report Abraham Tuschinski Award NFF 2016
