Show ambition, get out of the boxes, make challenging work, broaden the view! With some regularity, we hear such exhortations to Dutch film. Is there any movement yet? Golden Calf winner Buladó is now our Oscar entry. That will satisfy advocates of more colour in Dutch cinema. And on Sunday, check out When You Hear the Divine Call by Festus Toll, a somewhat more modest but equally telling example of new light in Dutch cinema.
In this short but rich documentary impression, the maker explores his Kenyan background. Entirely in his own way, prioritising feeling and experimentation. Because, he seems to want to say, there are already enough informative documentaries. At the Dutch Film Festival, it jumped When You Hear the Divine Call looked enough to be nominated for the Prize of the City of Utrecht. The jury called it a liberating ego document.
Bicultural
Festus Toll is a child of two cultures. Literally too, as his mother is from Kenya, his father is Dutch. A filmmaker, he graduated from AKV|St.Joost in 2017 with We Will Maintain, awarded the TENT Academy Award. A documentary in which he explores bicultural identity and challenges the cliché that the multicultural society has failed. When You Hear the Divine Call is a sequel to it.
"In my graduation film, I look at Dutch society," he explains in a phone interview. "In When You Hear the Divine Call I take my chance to go exploring in Kenya."
In the film, he follows his uncle Mike. The latter left Kenya behind in 1990 in search of greener grass, as he says. Now Mike has serious plans to return to Kenya permanently. Opposite, in the Netherlands, Festus Tolls' still very young nephew Genson. His birth marked the start of the film. The maker himself is the third protagonist - by letting us watch with his gaze.
Key moment
Between the memories and musings of his uncle and the christening service for Genson, in a free montage of old home movies and poetic impressions by Festus himself, one image acts as a key moment. We see Festus as a 12-year-old boy, politely listening to Uncle Mike's philosophical words in his aunt's garden. The latter insists to him that he is a homeless child. 'You don't belong to Africa and you don't belong to Europe.' But he also notes: 'So you need both Europe and Africa.'
This is the positive side, as Festus puts it. "You need both to discover who you are. It is fortunate that I also got both from my parents. I now dedicate the film to Genson. Twenty years from now, that quest will still be relevant to him."
What does the concept of home mean to Festus now?
"Home is a feeling, a longing for where you want to arrive. That's why my second film is more poetic. I project it onto my uncle, who after 30 years in Europe is now also bicultural."
Free images
At When You Hear the Divine Call a Dutch christening service can be right next to a funeral in Kenya. An 80-year-old dances in Nairobi under the same starry sky that the child in the Netherlands looks up to. Much freer images and associations than in a traditional documentary that neatly lays everything out.
"For me, making a film is above all a way to convey a feeling. A trip through a world still unknown to the viewer. The story fuses with the experience, which is something I would like to see more of in documentaries."
"My parents had taken me to Kenya before, but what was new now was that for the first time I could actually record my impressions. I also made it tangible for myself as a real part of my life that I can share with my uncle and my nephew."
"My uncle has not yet finally returned to Kenya from Austria. It was planned for March, but with the pandemic, everything has become uncertain. His search is to be the subject of my third film that I have developed as part of the IDFA academy. On Thursday, I will hand in the plan."
This could then become the conclusion of a remarkable trilogy. Striking because a subject usually thought of in political terms takes on a new and universally appealing dimension through a personal, poetic approach.
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