In Footsteps, Fiona Tan creates connections between personal stories and the world around us. The footage shows children at play and Dutch windmills, but above all people engaged in heavy physical labour in the countryside and in factories. In a fascinating juxtaposition, she combines these images with excerpts from letters she received from her father just after she moved to the Netherlands in the late 1980s. Through his education in Indonesia, Tan’s father knew a lot about the Netherlands without ever having visited the country. In the letters, he meanders seamlessly between personal news and world events, such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing.

In the 17th century, advances in the natural sciences and the invention of the telescope led Dutch women painters to closely study nature and include reptiles and insects in their art. Women such as Maria Sibylla Merian, Alida Withoos and Maria Moninckx advanced botany and zoology with their highly detailed paintings. Almost forgotten, now their works hang in many important museums around the world.
2026

Strong and independent Eliza works as the Polish teacher in a village school and begins an affair with local delinquent Stach. They have a child out of wedlock. When Stach is sent on forced labourer in Germany, Eliza and her child set off on an epic journey to be reunited with her lover.
2025

Unit 2 of the StB receive information from their Polish counterparts on a suspicious Indonesian diplomat. He is to be stationed in the Indonesian Embassy in Warsaw but flew early and is headed towards Prague instead. He was seen to be carrying a nondescript box. Agent Tomáš of the StB is assigned to stalk him and find out why he decided to go to Prague.
2025

A street sweeper, The messenger of the red-blooded letter to the soldier found out it was abused. Responsible for the extermination of neutralists during the Gestok/Gestapu era in Bali.
2022

In the 17th century, the Netherlands experienced an unprecedented artistic explosion: painters such as Rembrandt, Vermeer and Hals were so prolific that they were able to make a living from their talent alone; so much so that, within a prosperous society, thanks to wealth from overseas colonies and financial speculation, collecting works of art became a status symbol.
2022

No profession, no say, no freedom of expression. Life as a prince consort is not exactly pleasure taxing. No constitution ascribes any function to the husband of a queen. Nowhere does it say what he must or must not do. A life in the shadow of the crown. Can that go well?
2021

A surrealist dance film about the history of Gerajak, a committee consisting of village apparatus and farm workers. Gerajak was formed to carry out agrarian reform in the midst of famine and suffering in Gunung Kidul, 1963. This condition became a momentum for destructive behavior in the society.
2021

An Indonesian man with a communist background named Ramli was brutally murdered when the "Communist" purge occurred in 1965. His remaining family members lived in fear and silence until the making of this documentary. Adi, a brother of his, decided to revisit the horrific incident and visited the men who were responsible for the killings and one survivor of the purge. These meetings uncovered sadistic details of the murders and exposed raw emotions and reactions of the killers' family members about what happened in the past - much to Adi's disappointment.
2014

Birth Story: Ina May Gaskin and The Farm Midwives captures a spirited group of women who taught themselves how to deliver babies on a 1970s hippie commune. Today as nearly one third of all US babies are born via C-section, they fight to protect their knowledge and to promote respectful, safe maternity practices all over the globe. From the backs of their technicolor school buses, these pioneers rescued American midwifery from extinction, changed the way a generation approached pregnancy, and filmed nearly everything they did. With unprecedented access to the midwives' archival video collection, as well as modern day footage of life at the alternative intentional community where they live, this documentary shows childbirth the way most people have never seen it--unadorned, unabashed, and awe-inspiring.
2013

In this chilling and groundbreaking documentary, former Indonesian death squad leaders reenact their real-life mass killings in the style of various film genres. As they recreate their past atrocities, the line between reality and performance blurs, exposing the lingering impact of Indonesia's 1965-66 anti-communist purge and the unsettling psychology of its perpetrators.
2012

Frisian-spoken costume drama about the turbulent marriage between a writer and a socialist politician.
2001

A group of English, American, Dutch and Australian women creates a vocal orchestra while being imprisoned in a Japanese POW camp on Sumatra during World War II.
1997

The old man was trying to find his father's grave. In the end he was forced to convince himself and accept the reality that was at the end of the search.

Having defeated the best fighters of the Imperial Japanese army in occupied Shanghai, Ip Man and his family settle in post-war Hong Kong. Struggling to make a living, Master Ip opens a kung fu school to bring his celebrated art of Wing Chun to the troubled youth of Hong Kong. His growing reputation soon brings challenges from powerful enemies, including pre-eminent Hung Gar master, Hung Quan.
2010

During World War II in the freezing winter of 1944-45 the western Netherlands are in the grip of a famine. Many people move east to provide for their families. Fourteen year old Michiel can't wait to join the Dutch resistance, to the dismay of his father, who, as mayor, works to prevent escalations in the village.
2008

Indonesian activist Soe Hok Gie experiences a political awakening during the tumultuous regimes of Soeharto and Soekarno.
2005

Determined to discover her roots, a young woman travels to Indonesia and pieces together her parents' unconventional love story.
2002

Set in 1896, "Tjoet Nja' Dhien" celebrates one of Indonesia's great heroes who fought for independence from the Dutch. The pious Muslim people of Aceh, a city that had flourished since ancient times as a trade port, enter into a fierce war with the Dutch. Tjoet Nja' Dhien, the widow of a rebel leader operating in Aceh in Sumatra, assumes the leadership when her husband Teuku Uma is killed in an ambush. Dhien's charismatic presence and power of survival motivate the locals to join and later continue their opposition to the Dutch. Despite personal obstacles, she remained in the thick of the struggle for ten years.
1988

The story of Operation Market Garden—a failed attempt by the allies in the latter stages of WWII to end the war quickly by securing three bridges in Holland allowing access over the Rhine into Germany. A combination of poor allied intelligence and the presence of two crack German panzer divisions meant that the final part of this operation (the bridge in Arnhem over the Rhine) was doomed to failure.
1977

The life of a female weaver is thrown onto the socio-political canvas of pre-war and post-war communist Poland through the use of expressive allegorical and symbolic imagery in this imaginative take on the documentary form.
1975