De Cinema offers a carefully curated selection of compelling recent, restored, and often overlooked documentaries: films that remind us of what’s happening in the world around us. With a preference for music documentaries and politically and socially charged storytelling, each week we dive into the wonderful world of essayistic and documentary cinema.

HIGHLIGHTS

Dutch director Marjolijn Prins follows with FANTASTIQUE fourteen-year-old Fanta in Guinea, where she divides her days between school, caring for her sick mother, and her dream of becoming an acrobat at the Amoukanama circus. As only girl in the group, she looks for her place in a context of traditions and gender expectations.

After the success of meta music documentaries like PAVEMENTS, also the most well-known hip-hop group of the Netherlands gets a idiosyncratic portrait: THE MAKING OF DE JEUGD VAN TEGENWOORDIG. In honour of their twentieth anniversary, the film doesn’t stay behind the scenes but opens the emergency door. What started as chaos between Wiwa, Vjèze Fur, Faberyayo and Bas Bron, is now grown to a cultural phenomenon that set the tone for two decades.

ORLANDO, A COMPOSER’S LIFE IN THE RENAISSANCE portrays Orlandus Lassus as both a superstar and a courtier: brilliant and famous, but also vulnerable because he depended on patronage. His artistic freedom was always conditional upon political power, social status and economic necessity. The screening will be introduced by director Joachim Thôme.