Block 3. Spaces

“Hotel Mokum” is a documentary about a collective that squatted an abandoned hotel in Amsterdam. The collective transformed the hotel into a home, a refuge and an oasis in a city smothered by hypergentrification. At the height of its popularity, “Hotel Mokum” got evicted under the guise of fire safety. The story is rooted in protest against the housing crises and the criminalization of squatting. An intimate portrait of a hopeful collective and the city they are working to reclaim.

What to take, what to leave? How important are material possessions when you’re trying to save your life? Packages from Ukraine – filled with everything and nothing – wait patiently under a bridge to be found, while a voice stirs memories of frivolous and treasured personal effects, in an apparent heart-breaking farewell letter to Kiev.

On board a ferry, a series of passengers cross a river from one riverbank to the other. Some of the travelers wrap themselves in silence and observe the unfamiliar fellow travelers or contemplate the scenery. Some others chat, perhaps to liven up the voyage and speed up time. The journey on the waters seems to expand, the destination shore is postponed, the magnitude of space is blurred. Motion itself is perhaps the only certainty.

During the COVID pandemic, everyone withdrew into their homes, and social interaction came to a virtual standstill. But in the neighborhood in Durban, South Africa, where filmmaker Jethro Westraad comes from, this was hardly any different from the normal situation. He realizes this when he returns home during the lockdown and sees with outsider’s eyes the way his neighbors live in isolation, barricaded behind high walls with barbed wire, security cameras and vicious guard dogs. There’s no opportunity to make contact with the neighbors – so Westraad tries it via the intercom. In his short, vignette-like film “Love, Your Neighbour”, Westraad shows how living in a high-security bubble fuels racist prejudices and fear of the other. The tone is light and ironic, but the message is serious. The title can be read as the loving conclusion to an appeal to neighbors, but without the comma as a commandment with biblical connotations.

On the Norwegian island of Svalbard, home to the world's northernmost permanent human settlement, time both stands still and is running out. In this meticulously shot study of how climate change is reshaping even the sturdiest environments, Olga Krüssenberg focuses on locals, who are surrounded by processes beyond their control and are forced to rethink the world they once knew.