‘When you lose your self-respect, you’re done’
I, Daniel Blake is a British-French drama film about a 59-year-old skilled craftsman, widowed, living in Newcastle.
Daniel Blake (Dave Johns), is recovering from a severe heart attack. For the first time in his life, he needs help from the State. Continue reading Humiliating benefit systems undermine self-respect
The Town That Took on the Taxman, a revealing documentary on tax policies. Continue reading It’s just about fair play, tax policies revealed
Under Pressure is a short, realistic, not-idealized documentary about de-radicalization of ISIS fighters returning from Syria. In the juvenile prison of Wiesbaden (Germany) there are over 300 inmates. The majority of them are Muslims, whose parents and/or grandparents migrated to Germany. Continue reading De-radicalization of inmates by artist and imam
Wall Street collapses in The Big Short. The 2008 financial crisis left millions in the United States unemployed and without homes. It expanded into a worldwide financial and economic crisis. Not surprisingly in America, Hollywood revisits the economic ‘bubble’ created by mortgage dealers and reckless -too big to fail- banks. Continue reading Reflections on movie The big short
In August 2016, the Dutch TV programme Nieuwsuur aired a report by Roozbeh Kaboly (TV journalist and producer for Dutch National Television) about a 26-year-old dancer. While millions of Syrians had fled their war-torn country, Ahmad Joudeh was one of those who had to stay behind because he was, as he explained, too poor to escape the war.
Continue reading Dancing for peace
None of us, editors of this website, dared to go. The movie Son of Saul, by the Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes, was supposedly too hard to look at. Would we be able to deal with the evil we would be exposed to? In the end I decided to go, some strange desire to find out what I could handle, but also to find out whether I could begin to understand what evil can do to those subjected to it. Continue reading Son of Saul, a hard movie to watch
