Directing
Ineke Smits graduated in 1984 as a photographer and video artist from the Rotterdam Art Academy. From 1989 she studied film directing and script writing at the National Film and Television School in England. She completed her Master in 1994, and subsequently collaborated with writer Arthur Japin on a few shorts she directed for Dutch broadcasters VPRO and NTR. In 2001 their first, award winning, feature, Magonia, premiered at Toronto International Film Festival. In 2002/03 she received a Nipkow Fellowship to work in Berlin, and in 2004 she developed the first draft of a feature script, The House of my Fathers, at the Binger Filmlab in Amsterdam. With this project she also participated in EAVE. Her second feature The Aviatrix of Kazbek closed in 2010 the International Film Festival Rotterdam. Between 1998 en 2008 Ineke wrote and directed four successful documentaries, amongst them Putin’s Mama, that were presented at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam and other international festivals. With new media designer Paul Swagerman, photographer Daria Scagliola, radio maker Jeroen Stout and producer Simone van den Broek, she co-initiated Vertical Citizens, a trans-media documentary project. As a producer she was co-founder and head of development of Volya Films between 2004 and 2009. In 2011 she followed the Story Editing workshop by Franz Rodenkirchen and founded with Jeroen Stout their company Stout&Smits.

On the flat island of Texel, Marie is a girl who has a vivid imagination who dreams about mountains. She feels oppressed by the strict religious island community and its narrow-minded way of life. Being the only girl in a big and poor family during wartime, she doesn't have much of a choice than to marry Paul, the beachcomber’s son. From the moment a regiment of Georgians are stationed on the island, Marie’s life changes and flourishes. With their film, music, and especially with their inventive, unusual survival strategies and entirely different life style, this isolated group of outsiders and in particular the young soldier Goga opens a new way for Marie. Through them, she realizes all her dreams without fear.
Originally from the southwest of the Netherlands, Sandra Roelofs met Mikheil Saakashvili while studying in Strasbourg. She fell for this politically-minded Georgian’s relentless charm and followed him first to the United States and then to his homeland. She was present when, partly under his leadership, the Georgian government was deposed during the Rose Revolution in 2003, and again at his inauguration as president, and 10 years later at his electoral defeat, partly brought about by the release of photographs of torture in Georgian prisons and the growing corruption of the government in power. The camera follows Roelofs over the course of her last year as Georgia’s First Lady. Backed by a wealth of archive material, she talks about her love for her husband and his country, about how power changed him, and about their family life and the pain caused by their physical separation.
Originally from the southwest of the Netherlands, Sandra Roelofs met Mikheil Saakashvili while studying in Strasbourg. She fell for this politically-minded Georgian’s relentless charm and followed him first to the United States and then to his homeland. She was present when, partly under his leadership, the Georgian government was deposed during the Rose Revolution in 2003, and again at his inauguration as president, and 10 years later at his electoral defeat, partly brought about by the release of photographs of torture in Georgian prisons and the growing corruption of the government in power. The camera follows Roelofs over the course of her last year as Georgia’s First Lady. Backed by a wealth of archive material, she talks about her love for her husband and his country, about how power changed him, and about their family life and the pain caused by their physical separation.

A sea faring father, a man living on the edge of mental sanity, periodically sees his young son. During the visits, the father tells the boy stories, exotic as well as close to home, about Magonia. This is a mythical place where clouds represent impossible dreams and unfulfilled desires. But the characters in this imaginary place all curiously resemble people now living near the father.
Single play over drie prostituees in een peepshow. Uit de serie: Lolamoviola

In the heart of the Middle East, a metropolis is mushrooming. In Dubai, the city where anything seems possible, one after the other skyscraper shoots up. To realise the property developers' plans, workers are called in from India, Pakistan and Nepal, who earn a mere pittance. Just like the nannies and cleaning women of well-to-do expats. Eighty percent of the inhabitants of Dubai come from other parts of the world, so who calls this city home? The original inhabitants saw the city change and now contend with religious and social taboos, something that completely passes by the average expat. In a photography class, students of various origins show how they experience the city. Apparently, original residents, expats and workers live mostly separate lives in a class society where the labourer is driven into the ground and the rich housewife thinks everyone in the city is happy.

In the heart of the Middle East, a metropolis is mushrooming. In Dubai, the city where anything seems possible, one after the other skyscraper shoots up. To realise the property developers' plans, workers are called in from India, Pakistan and Nepal, who earn a mere pittance. Just like the nannies and cleaning women of well-to-do expats. Eighty percent of the inhabitants of Dubai come from other parts of the world, so who calls this city home? The original inhabitants saw the city change and now contend with religious and social taboos, something that completely passes by the average expat. In a photography class, students of various origins show how they experience the city. Apparently, original residents, expats and workers live mostly separate lives in a class society where the labourer is driven into the ground and the rich housewife thinks everyone in the city is happy.

When young Gonga and his cousin Bart find a suitcase full of rusty crosses in a scrap yard, Bart gets the idea to turn them into neon crucifixes and sell them door-to-door to the gullible inhabitants of Tbilisi. Their crusade through the suburbs of the city becomes a quest for love and friendship.

