Arquivo

Immigrants who are minors, who arrive in Holland without their parents and are in search of political asylum, are placed in a KWE, a Dutch acronym for the small housing units where they live and wait until they attain the age of 18. Kim Landstra has made a frank documentary, an intimate record on the experiences and the memories of three African youngsters - Bernard, Toni, and Pedro - refugees in a struggle for survival and for happiness: The first of these, from the Congo, lived from hand to mouth for three months until he was transferred to a KWE in the locality of Middelburg, his mind seething with visions of the civil war in his country. In the KWE, Ali shares a small apartment with two other young Africans. Toni is a juvenile ex-fighter from the Sudan who abandoned the army, spent 22 days as a stowaway in the hold of a ship and who disembarked in Holland quite by chance. Toni is now engaged in a struggle to remain in a European country. The third immigrant, another Sudanese, by name Pedro, is in trouble with the Ministry of Justice who do not believe he has come all the way from the south of the Sudan and who reject his claim for permanent residence. He is called on for further clarification and is obliged to prove he is not lying. The boy learns to speak Dutch, cooks African "fou-fou" every day, and makes friends. Pedro does, however, find life very difficult, away from his parents, in strange surroundings. He often has nightmares and suffers from headache. He is constantly assailed by uncertainty as to the future, whether he will be permitted to stay on in Holland or whether, one day, he will be sent back to the Sudan.