Eliane Esther Bots / documentary / Netherlands / 2019 / 18'

Cloud Forest

A fairytale-like film in which five Dutch girls take the viewer on an imaginative journey through the memories and images they have of their parents’ experiences of the war in the former Yugoslavia. A war which the girls haven’t physically experienced themselves. The narratives are a combination of facts and imaginations, vague memories and detailed impressions, transferred from the parents to their daughters through conversations, listening in, silence and finding information on youtube. Resulting in a scattered image of a conflict present on the horizon of one's life. It is in the darkness, in the shadows, lit by mobile phones, where these narratives can unfold. While the girls listen back to their own stories, a mechanism similar to listening to a narrative shared by a parent, the viewer is invited to listen along and become part of the intimate spheres of their family.