My room is my best friend

My Room Is My Best Friend is a documentary about young asylum seekers, minors living in The Netherlands. Youngsters with a secret past and an uncertain future, who show up accidentally in our daily lives to disappear later just as quick as they came. We know very little about their 'state of being'.

The documentary is inspired by the 'Landkoffer' project, a cooperation between Openbaar Bibliotheek Amsterdam, School der Poëzie and Kunstweb.
The project has been rewarded with the first award of the Evens Foundation for accomplishment in stimulating social integration and intercultural education in Europe. It has been implemented in six European countries and had great success in the Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison for juvenile delinquents.
In this project at their school in The Netherlands the youngsters write a personal poem about a feeling, or an experience, or a memory in Dutch. They put this poem in a little wooden case which they paint and decorate with photographs and other material inspired by their own poem.
The poems being the main aspect in the film give the public an insight in the inner world of the youth in the film. The contrast between their daily reality and their memories of a life they have lived, written in their poem in a 'new language' is sorrowful and not childlike.
The position of these homeless and unrooted children is depicted in a special and unexpected way.
The expression 'inburgeren' (to fit in the community) which is a hot item nowadays gets a moving and unexpected dimension.

• Premiere: Netherlands Film Festival 2007
• Broadcasted: Regional broadcaster RTV West, 2008
• Broadcasted: National broadcaster NTR, 2011
• Part of the permanent exhibition 'Komen & Gaan', Museon, The Hague, The Netherlands

OFFICIAL SELECTION: Debut Competition Netherlands Film Festival 2007
NOMINATED: Best documentary SCENECS Film Festival 2009

• Documentary
• 47 minutes
• Recorded on: XDCAM / DVCAM
• Screening: DIGIBeta / DVD