Documentary movies

Where Comes Mulan follows artist and filmmaker Tianyi Zheng as she returns to her ancestral village in Huangpi, Wuhan, where the legendary figure of Mulan is said to have originated. Beginning with intimate conversations with relatives and local residents, the film traces how Mulan has been remembered or forgotten in everyday life, only to collide with how local authorities have transformed her image into a powerful tourism brand. Through walks across tourist sites and abandoned ruins, Zheng questions the gap between lived memory and official narrative.

The maverick entrepreneur and multi-millionaire Hennie van der Most built a business empire from scratch. Now we follow him as he works on what is set to be his final project: creating a large-scale theme park on Rotterdam's Maashaven.

After a painful break-up, Amsterdam-based researcher Noa is in mourning. She keeps dreaming about meeting her ex-lover Anna in the dunes by the sea, and about a mysterious glass hammer. When Noa tries to uncover the meaning of this object, she meets Saffron, a fellow lover of literature, poetry and theoretical research.

For the freelance drivers who took the initial opportunity offered by the international company Uber, the prospects of self-management and grand earnings were irresistible. Changes in Uber procedures, however, left the drivers frustrated and struggling. This innovative documentary probes the case of drivers in the Netherlands.

The only constant in life is change – and that applies to the Amsterdam harbour as well. As part of the energy transition, public authorities decided in 2019 to close down the coal-fired power station. This meant that a landmark on the Amsterdam skyline – Hemweg 8’s smokestack – would disappear.

In extreme cold, the human body can turn against itself through paradoxical undressing: failing nerves mistake freezing for heat, compelling the dying to shed their last protection. In 水托邦 (Hydrotopia), hydrophones frozen into a block of ice capture the material disintegration of their frozen body as a projected film gradually emerges into clarity.

“We are descended from the original inhabitants of this land, and that’s something to be proud of!” says one of the members of SCV Wajonong. Since the 1980s, this cultural association has been the go-to place in Rotterdam for celebrating and preserving the culture and traditions of Indigenous Surinamese people.

Since the Arab Revolution in Egypt in 2011, which deposed the long-standing regime of Hosni Mubarak, the country has experienced ongoing political unrest till the rise of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. In this hallucinatory journey that defies our idea of reality, MeowX2 takes us to the heart of a propaganda machine that shapes and propels an image of aggressive, conservative and ultimately toxic masculinity – one capable of permeating society down to its most personal spheres.

More than 100.000 people follow the two-wheeled adventures of iamdeathrow on Curaçao online. Filmmaker Tittel del Mar creates an intimate portrait of Alexander Hanst. When he’s not riding, he struggles with the pressure of becoming a better version of himself. What is the difference between the version of you that you show to the world, and the person you would really want to be?

When ROV is sent on a toxic treasure hunt into the deep depths of our waters, it discovers how what was once an easy solution is now poisoning our seas and reverberating into the future.