vriza

Stones Have Laws @ Criterion Channel
2023-09-01 08:00 - 2024-03-01 00:00 (Europe/Amsterdam)
Stones Have Laws (Dee Sitonu A Weti), a film by Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan, and Tolin Alexander, in collaboration with the Maroons from Suriname, has been selected by film collective Third Horizon to stream on Criterion Channel platform.
Over the last decade, Third Horizon has established itself as a champion of exceptional Caribbean cinema rooted in the region’s locus as a global crossroads of both history and geography, a pivot around which the old world became the new, and a harbinger of an intersectional future ravaged by colonialism and climate change. Featuring a selection of films drawn from Third Horizon’s flagship initiative, the Miami-based Third Horizon Film Festival, from its first edition in 2016 to its most recent in 2022, this program brings together fiction, documentary, and hybrid works from across the region and its diasporas. Formally and politically radical, these films seek to transcend stereotypical, reductive, and potentially harmful ways of seeing the Caribbean while understanding that representation is a means to an end and not merely an end in itself. In refusing to make a spectacle of their historically marginalized subjects while embracing the layered complexity of Caribbean identity, they become vital and impactful works of art.
FEATURES: Cocote (2017), Stones Have Laws (2019), Right Near the Beach (2020), Paroles de nègres (2021)
SHORTS: Field Notes (2014), Douvan jou ka leve (2017), The Cemetery Lightens (2018), Dadli (2018), Nou voix (2018), My Mother Resents Me (2019), Aquí (2020), Here Is the Imagination of the Black Radical (2020), The White Death of the Black Wizard (2020)
Available in Canada and the USA, 1 Sept. 2023 – 1 March 2024.

Read more about the film Stones Have Laws…

World Premiere East of Noon @ Quinzaine Film Festival Cannes
2024-05-15 08:00 - 2024-05-23 23:30
EAST OF NOON by Hala Elkoussy is premiering at Quinzaine des Cinéastes at Film Festival Cannes. Premiere at 21 May 17:15 in Théatre Croisette. Further screenings with French subtitles only at 22/5/24 at Cinema Les Arcades Salle 1, 22/5/24 at 17 hrs at Cinema Alexandre III, 23/5/24 at 16:30 at Cinema Le Raimu.
East of Noon is a satire on the inner workings of an ailing autocracy and its inherent vulnerability to youth’s unchained vision of a better world. The story unfolds in two spaces: SHARQ12, a sandy enclave situated in an industrial ruin; and the Sea, a fluid landscape and simultaneously a longed for state of freedom. How do you imagine the sea when you have never seen it?
The characters embody a core personal question: How is hope kept alive in a grim reality? They struggle with fear in quest for a freedom that is instinctive, but ill-defined, with a hovering dilemma: can one stay clean in a dirty world? It is the young artist Abdo who most longs for freedom. His music is his saviour. The stories of his grandmother Jalala provide further relief from the hopeless reality, but also perpetuate the status quo, reflecting the complex relationship of art to authority.
production: vriza, seriousFilm, Nu’ta Film
realized within the framework of De Verbeelding, a collaboration of Mondriaan Fund and Netherlands Film Fund | funders: De Verbeelding, Production Incentive, Amsterdam Fund for the Arts, Fonds 21, DOHA Film Institute

KALI WAAL @ puntWG
2024-07-25 17:00 - 2024-07-28 19:00 | Puntwg, WG Plein t/o nr 80, Amsterdam, 1054DM, Netherlands
exhibition premiere of the film KALI WAAL by Jasper Coppes (22 min., 2024)
location: puntWG, Amsterdam
opening: 25 July 17:00 – 19:00
opening hours: 26 – 28 July 14.00 to 18.00
public conversation Fiction as Resistance: 27 July 17:00 – 19.00
The film KALI WAAL combines fiction and documentary approaches to explore controversial ecological practices in the Netherlands. Artist Jasper Coppes’ short film will premiere on Thursday, July 25th, at puntWG in Amsterdam. The presentation includes a program of screenings and a spatial installation, which will be on view until 28th of July. On Saturday, 27th of July, a conversation will take place between the artist and journalist Mira Sys, whose research on polluted lakes was a significant inspiration for the work.
The work is related to the dumping of granulite and other industrial waste in sand extraction areas by various dredging companies, a practice that has been in the media in recent years as a ‘serious environmental offense’. Coppes visited nature reserves near the river Waal for his film. To protect the local residents from the companies involved, Coppes assembled a team of external researcher-actors. These young individuals question what can be considered as ‘nature’ and conduct their own experiments into the water quality of these lakes.
The film engages in a dialogue with utopian narratives about innovative rewilding processes advocated by industries and authorities. According to proponents, the dumping of polluted mud in seemingly lifeless sand extraction lakes leads to renewed biodiversity. They present toxic dredging as the remedy for issues caused by previous industrial extraction.
By scrutinizing the optimistic narrative of authorities about this experimental design, Kali Waal invites the viewer to doubt the innocence of this landscape. Seen from up close, the vibrant greens and earthy browns resemble more of a sickening slurry. Coppes emphasizes that, “like the ‘primal cows’ roaming here, this landscape has been manipulated to appear as primitive, authentic nature, but is actually shaped by industrial forces.”
Presentation of KALI WAAL and other works developed during the making of the film and/or related to the film’s themes. On 27 July, the artist will have a public conversation with journalist and writer Mira Sys, followed by drinks. In the public conversation with Mira Sys, Coppes will delve into fiction as a strategy to address environmental issues.
KALI WAAL is supported by Korte Verbeelding, a collaboration between Mondriaan Fonds and the Nederlands Film Fonds, Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunsten, Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds Gelderland, was developed in collaboration with Zone2Source in Amsterdam and P–OST in Nijmegen, and produced by vriza (www.vriza.org).

Jasper Coppes in conversation with Mira Sys, photo: Rhea Harbers

Dutch Premiere East of Noon @ IFFR
2025-02-04 18:15 - 20:00 | IFFR
East of Noon has its Dutch premiere at IFFR at 4 February 2025, 18:15 in Pathé 3 in Rotterdam. Please join the screening. Director Hala Elkoussy, DOP Abdelsalam Moussa, and sound designer Abdalrahman Mahmoud and other crew will attend the screening.

World Premiere Monikondee @ Cinéma du Réel
2025-03-26 15:00 - 17:00 | Cinema l’Arlequin, 76 Rue de Rennes, Paris, France
MONIKONDEE — a film by Dutch artists Lonnie van Brummelen, Siebren de Haan and Surinames theatermaker Tolin Alexander premiers in Paris at Cinéma du Réel. The three directors, boatman Boogie Adiontoe, Director of Photography Sander Coumou, and set sound recordist Idi Lemmers will be present at the world premiere.
A boatman delivers cargo to remote Indigenous and Maroon communities along the river bordering Suriname and French Guiana. His winding journey offers an inside look into the complex challenge of maintaining local customs in the face of rampant gold mining, multinational corporations, and a changing climate.
After their sumptuous Episode of the Sea (2012) shot on land and at sea with fishermen from the town of Urk in the Netherlands, the pair of Dutch artists, Lonnie Van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan, began working with Surinamese theatre director Tolin Alexander. Together, they started making participatory films working closely with the Surinamese peoples who descend from Maroon communities. Following Stones Have Laws (2018), Monikondee (for “money country”) is set along the Maroni River, on the frontier between former Dutch Guiana and present-day French Guiana. It documents the economic and cultural relations between the indigenous and Maroon communities – or Fiiman (for “free man”) as the protagonist, a boatman who sails up and down the river to deliver his cargo of petrol to remote villages and gold-diggers, immediately corrects. The story follows the vagaries of the boatman’s trips, the damage to his slender, 18-metre-long craft, the passage through the rapids made more difficult by the weight of his dangerously balanced cargo. Here, each plays their own part and tells stories of origins, travels, extractivism and the colonial plundering prolonged by economic enslavement to the goldmining that is destroying their river. Each stop-off is an opportunity for other voices to speak up, in fable or song, following an ancient narrative technique known as Mato, but also to multiply and join forces in order to gain ownership and jurisdiction of conflicts needed to effectively fight for territorial and environmental rights.
Antoine Thirion
More information on the project
Interview with the directors

Dutch Premiere Object Reconnaissance @ NFF
2025-09-27 13:30 - 15:30 | Louis Hartlooper Complex, Tolsteegbrug 1, Utrecht, Tolsteegbrug 1, Utrecht, Utrecht, 3511ZN, Netherlands
The short film OBJECT RECONNAISSANCE by artist Stefanos Tsivopoulos has its international premiere at Netherlands Film Festival in the short film program Indisch Zwijgen at Louis Hartlooper Complex in Utrecht. English subtitles.
In this 2024 film by Stefanos Tsivopoulos, Ria searches for a lost heirloom linked to her grandmother Merah Muda, an Indonesian activist who fled to the Netherlands in 1965. Through diaries and artifacts, Ria uncovers hidden family secrets, blending fact and fiction while exploring themes of migration, memory, identity, and post-colonial history.
Screening with Q&A in presence of the directors.

East of Noon @ LHC Utrecht
2025-10-29 17:00 - 19:00 | Louis Hartlooper Complex, Tolsteegbrug 1, Utrecht, Tolsteegbrug 1, Utrecht, Utrecht, 3511ZN, Netherlands
Special screening of EAST OF NOON by artist-filmmaker Hala Elkoussy at Louis Hartlooper Complex in Utrecht in collaboration with the Master Artistic Research program of HKU. The film is screened with English subtitles and followed by a Q&A in presence of the director.
In EAST OF NOON the young musician Abdo rebels against his elders, seeking freedom through his art in a confined world outside of time. The film is an impressive, opulently designed fable with a surreal undertone exposing the fate of rebellious youth in an imaginary autocratic enclave.
EAST OF NOON is the second feature of Hala Elkoussy. It premiered in 2024 at Quinzaine des Cinéastes in Cannes and had its Dutch premiere at IFFR. The screening is part of the Dutch cinema release of the film in selected theaters.
More information on East of Noon
Interview in MetropolisM with Hala Elkoussy by Annie Goodner

East of Noon @ Filmacademie Amsterdam
2025-10-30 19:30 - 22:00 | Filmacademie Amsterdam, Markenplein 1, Amsterdam, 1011MV, Netherlands
Special screening of East of Noon at Filmacademie Amsterdam. The screening will be followed by a Q&A and is free and open to the public.
19:30-22:00hrs
Nederlandse Filmacademie, Markenplein 1, 1011 MV Amsterdam
In EAST OF NOON the young musician Abdo rebels against his elders, seeking freedom through his art in a confined world outside of time. The film is an impressive, opulently designed fable with a surreal undertone exposing the fate of rebellious youth in an imaginary autocratic enclave.
EAST OF NOON is the second feature of Hala Elkoussy. It premiered in 2024 at Quinzaine des Cinéastes in Cannes and had its Dutch premiere at IFFR. The screening is part of the Dutch cinema release of the film in selected theaters.
More information on the event & RSVP
More information on East of Noon
Interview in MetropolisM with Hala Elkoussy by Annie Goodner

East of Noon @ Concordia Enschede
2025-11-03 18:45 - 21:45 | Concordia Enschede, Langestraat 56, Enschede, Netherlands
Screening of the feature film EAST OF NOON by artist-filmmaker Hala Elkoussy at Concordia cinema in Enschede in collaboration with Moving Image department of AKI. The program starts with a lecture by the artist followed by a screening with Q&A in presence of Hala Elkoussy. The film is screened with English subtitles.
In EAST OF NOON the young musician Abdo rebels against his elders, seeking freedom through his art in a confined world outside of time. The film is an impressive, opulently designed fable with a surreal undertone exposing the fate of rebellious youth in an imaginary autocratic enclave.
EAST OF NOON is the second feature of Hala Elkoussy. It premiered in 2024 at Quinzaine des Cinéastes in Cannes and had its Dutch premiere at IFFR. The screening is part of the Dutch cinema release of the film in selected theaters.
More information on East of Noon
Interview with Hala Elkoussy in MetropolisM

Dutch Premiere Monikondee @ IDFA
2025-11-15 21:00 - 23:00 | Eye, IJpromenade 1, Amsterdam, 1031 KT, Netherlands
MONIKONDEE, a participatory film project by Surinamese theatermaker Tolin Alexander and Dutch artist-filmmakers Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan, premieres in the Netherlands at IDFA, where it screens in the Signed program. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the three directors.
In the remote rainforest between Suriname and French Guiana, Boogie—a Maroon boatman—delivers essential goods to communities facing crop failure from climate change and water pollution caused by gold mining. As self-sufficiency comes under growing pressure, local livelihoods grow increasingly dependent on money to survive, and ancestral traditions come under strain.
MONIKONDEE blends participatory filmmaking with the multi-voiced Maroon Mato storytelling tradition to portray resilience in the face of ecological disruption, economic pressure, and shifting social realities.
MONIKONDEE had its world premiere at Cinéma du Réel, where it won the Intangible Heritage Award. It has also received prizes and recognition at festivals in Morocco, Italy, and French Guiana. Cinema Delicatessen will release the film in Dutch cinemas starting 20 November.
More information on the project
Interview with the directors

Monikondee @ Kriterion Amsterdam
2025-11-26 19:15 - 21:15 | Kriterion Amsterdam, Roetersstraat 170, Amsterdam, 1018WE, Netherlands
Special screening of Monikondee at KRITERION Amsterdam, English subtitles.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the three directors: Tolin Alexander, Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan moderated by Berith Danse.
Time: 19:15-21:15 hrs
Address: Roetersstraat 170 Amsterdam
For centuries, the Maroons in Suriname have kept capitalist society at bay. Descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped plantations, they survived by adhering to ancestral values. In recent years, however, economic interests have penetrated deep into the rainforest.
Boatman Boogie navigates the Maroni River, which forms the border between Suriname and French Guiana, to deliver essential cargo to remote Maroon and Indigenous communities. While these forest peoples grow their own food, they are increasingly dependent on boatmen for their daily provisions. Climate-driven flooding and droughts are destroying their crops, and gold mining is poisoning the water. When Boogie is summoned by his clan leaders to attend his nephew’s trial, the demands of his work begin to conflict with his traditional duties. During a winding journey far upstream, the currents grow increasingly unpredictable.
Boogie is the film’s narrator, sharing this role with the people he encounters. The multi-voiced narrative of this hybrid, participatory documentary draws inspiration from the mato, a collective Maroon storytelling technique in which the storyteller is interrupted by others who add their own stories and songs. The script was developed in dialogue with the participants, and in the film, they re-enact their own lives.
More information on Monikondee

Monikondee @ Filmacademy Amsterdam
2025-11-27 19:30 - 22:00 | Filmacademie Amsterdam, Markenplein 1, Amsterdam, 1011MV, Netherlands
Special screening of Monikondee at Filmacademie Amsterdam.
The screening will be followed by a Q&A and is free and open to the public.
Time: 19:30-22:00hrs
Address: Nederlandse Filmacademie, Markenplein 1, 1011 MV Amsterdam, 2nd floor
For centuries, the Maroons in Suriname have kept capitalist society at bay. Descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped plantations, they survived by adhering to ancestral values. In recent years, however, economic interests have penetrated deep into the rainforest.
Boatman Boogie navigates the Maroni River, which forms the border between Suriname and French Guiana, to deliver essential cargo to remote Maroon and Indigenous communities. While these forest peoples grow their own food, they are increasingly dependent on boatmen for their daily provisions. Climate-driven flooding and droughts are destroying their crops, and gold mining is poisoning the water. When Boogie is summoned by his clan leaders to attend his nephew’s trial, the demands of his work begin to conflict with his traditional duties. During a winding journey far upstream, the currents grow increasingly unpredictable.
Boogie is the film’s narrator, sharing this role with the people he encounters. The multi-voiced narrative of this hybrid, participatory documentary draws inspiration from the mato, a collective Maroon storytelling technique in which the storyteller is interrupted by others who add their own stories and songs. The script was developed in dialogue with the participants, and in the film, they re-enact their own lives.
More information on the event & RSVP
More information on Monikondee
Interview with Tolin Alexander, Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan by Jason Fox

Monikondee @ Filmhuis Den Haag
2025-12-05 19:00 - 21:00 | Filmhuis Den Haag, Spui 191, Den Haag, Zuid-Holland, 2511BN, Netherlands
Screening in collaboration with KABK in The Hague, English subtitles, with Q&A in the presence of the three directors: Lonnie van Brummelen, Siebren de Haan, Tolin Alexander moderated by Erik Viskil
Filmhuis Den Haag, Spui 191, The Hague, 5 December, 19:00-21:00
Along the Maroni River, the border between Suriname and French Guiana, boatman Boogie carries stories, songs, and survival through a landscape under threat. As droughts, floods, and gold-mining poison the forest’s veins, he must confront change while holding on to the wisdom of his ancestors. Monikondee is a participatory journey through resistance and renewal, where the river itself becomes a witness, and culture becomes the current that refuses to fade.
More information on Monikondee
Interview with directors
Research interviews with Maroon and Indigenous participants

Monikondee: EYE streaming & Fiiman Dey
2026-08-26 - 2027-08-26
Monikondee: EYE streaming & Fiiman Dey
De bekroonde documentaire Monikondee wordt vanaf 27 augustus 2026 wereldwijd beschikbaar via het streamingplatform van Eye Filmmuseum. Eye selecteerde de film als een van de 25 films van de 21e eeuw die het instituut onder de aandacht wil brengen van een internationaal publiek. De film is te bekijken met Nederlandse, Engelse, Franse en Spaanse ondertiteling: player.eyefilm.nl/en/films/monikondee
Voor kijkers in Suriname is Monikondee gratis beschikbaar via de link:
player.eyefilm.nl/nl/films/monikondee-sr
Vertoning tijdens Fiiman Dey
Naast de online release krijgt Monikondee ook een bijzondere vertoning in Suriname in het kader van Fiiman Dey, de Dag van de Marrons. Deze jaarlijkse viering herdenkt de vrede die de Ndyuka op 10 oktober 1760 sloten met de Nederlandse koloniale overheid — het eerste vredesverdrag dat duurzaam standhield. Dit vormde een erkenning van de autonomie van de Marrons.
De vertoning vindt plaats op 15 oktober in Paramaribo. Daarbij zullen gezagsdragers aanwezig zijn van gemeenschappen die in de film een rol spelen, leden van het filmteam, assemblee-leden en regeringsfunctionarissen. Na afloop volgt een panelgesprek over de thema’s van de film en de actuele betekenis ervan voor Suriname. De vertoning wordt georganiseerd door Forum Tolin Toli Masanga en de exacte locatie van de vertoning wordt binnenkort bekendgemaakt via: vriza.org
De bijeenkomst wordt mede mogelijk gemaakt door het prijzengeld van de Human Rights Film Award, die Monikondee in 2025 ontving tijdens het 21e Move It! Film Festival für Menschenrechte in Dresden.
De jury schreef: “Door de intimiteit van de hoofdpersonen en de moed om het verhaal op caleidoscopische wijze te vertellen, maakt Monikondee het mogelijk om geopolitiek te begrijpen vanuit de geleefde ervaring.”
Het volledige juryrapport is hier te lezen
Over de film
Monikondee is een film van Tolin Alexander, Lonnie van Brummelen en Siebren de Haan, gemaakt met Kalina, Wayana, Pamaka, Aluku en Ndyuka gemeenschappen.
Monikondee speelt zich af op in het rivierrijke grensgebied van Suriname en Frans-Guyana. Vanuit de leefwereld van Marrons en Inheemse gemeenschappen toont de film de gevolgen van goudwinning, klimaatverandering en eeuwenlange economische exploitatie — maar ook de moed en het doorzettingsvermogen waarmee zij hun leven en toekomst in eigen hand proberen te houden.
Info over Fiiman Dey — Tolin Alexander: erwin_alexander@yahoo.com
Info over Monikondee en streaming — Lonnie van Brummelen: lonnie@vriza.org
