Toespraak staatssecretaris Fleur Gräper-van Koolwijk tijdens de opening van het Movies that Matter Festival

Toespraak | 25-03-2024

[het gesproken woord geldt]

Good evening everyone.

Imagine being trapped underground.

Spending months in subway tunnels, deep below the earth’s surface.

No daylight, no bed to call your own, cut off from everything you hold dear.

Fearing the moment when the ground above you begins to shake uncontrollably due to the blast of a bomb.

You fled, and now you are trapped.

Trapped with around fifteen-hundred other people.

That is the setting for the docudrama Photophobia, shot in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.

This movie offers us a glimpse of the war in Ukraine, as seen through the eyes of two children.

While the adults around them sink beneath their fears, the children begin to see life in the subway tunnels as a game.

One of the film’s directors, Pavol Pekarčík, is here with us tonight.

In a recent interview, he beautifully captured the children’s desire to play when he said: ‘You cannot turn off childhood.’

The film offers us a unique perspective on the war.

A playful perspective, in deadly serious times.

A remarkable insight into what life is like there, in that place, at that moment.

That is the power of cinema.

Cinema lets us walk in someone else’s shoes.

On screen, we get to see what people are experiencing in places that are beyond our reach – to see what they are going through, what they are feeling.

It enables us to sympathize with them.

To share in their experience.

In their feelings.

Celebrated Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu once said it so fittingly in just a single sentence: ‘Cinema is universal, beyond flags and borders and passports.’

Making cinema a powerful art form that we greatly need right now.

In a world where understanding is in short supply.

Where people are diametrically opposed on more and more issues.

And where the gaps between these groups are becoming ever harder to bridge.

That is why your work is so important.

Because you, as creators, have the power to close those gaps just a little.

Through the stories you tell.

And through the insights you give into people’s lives, wherever they may be.

Without having to leave the Netherlands, Movies that Matter takes you to all kinds of places on our planet.

To a tiny Danish island where its inhabitants are struggling with the effects of climate change; to the American city of Baltimore where the mayor is taking a stand to stop gun violence; to Morocco, where a young filmmaker goes in search of her roots.

All very different stories.

But all with a common thread: they all revolve around social issues and human rights.

Rights that apply to every human being, but are denied to so many.

Especially in those places at war.

That is why it is vital that we continue to tell these stories.

That we have the chance to empathize with people in other parts of the world.

That we know what their situation is like.

What they are going through.

As filmmakers, you help make that possible.

You tell the stories that need to be told.

I would like to take this moment to echo the words of Ukrainian filmmaker and brand-new Oscar winner Mstyslav Chernov: ‘Cinema forms memories and memories form history.’

In the coming days, dozens of films will be screened during Movies that Matter.

Plenty of new stories that will form our memories.

Plenty of new knowledge to gain.

And plenty of opportunities to walk in someone else’s shoes.

Let’s start that journey together.

Thank you!