Vluchtval

A film by Laura Stek

Vluchtval is a documentary about being uprooted and what happens to mind and body when you lose purchase on solid ground.

90 year old poet Jana Beranova lives in a cosily crammed upstairs apartment in Rotterdam. It’s her ‘safe nest,’ as she herself calls it, from where she creates her own world with words.  

25 year old freerunner Abdallah Marega lives in Paris and is enlisted in the French military. He spends almost all of his off-duty hours outside. He soars across roofs, glides off of handrails and rolls over bridges. It’s a way of life.

A poet in Rotterdam and a freerunner in Paris. One lives primarily at home, in her own head - the other outside, in motion. There is a 65 year age-gap between them and yet they share a strong connection: both of them know what it’s like to be uprooted, and they channel this feeling into art. One with the body, the other with words.

Vluchtval weaves Abdallah and Jana’s life stories together through the media of poetry and parkour. The film shows the ultimate consequences of being uprooted, but also how one can regain control and, by trial and error - falling and getting back up again - land safely on firm ground.

Laura Stek (1983) is a presenter and documentary/podcast producer at VPRO Radio. Besides countless radio documentaries, she co-created the podcast Ongesigneerd, about unnoted design, with Tjitske Mussche. In 2019 she and Olivier van Beemen received De Tegel Publieksprijs for the radio documentary Bloed & Bier, about Heineken’s doings in Rwanda. In 2019 Laura made the hybrid documentary/dance film Gioia, which was selected for Gouden Kalf-contention; in 2021 the six-part podcast Kassiewijle - about death - in collaboration with artist Babs Bakels. With Vluchtval, she once again examines a subject on multiple levels, and in doing so doesn’t shy away from humour or experimentation.