Home Game (2024)

Voted best film at the Movies That Matter Festival. Very good documentary by and about Lidija Zelovic who came to the Netherlands as a refugee at the age of 22. She starts to love her second home, and where the Netherlands initially seems like a beautiful, neat and well-organized country, after the 9-11 attacks it increasingly becomes a country of contradictions where right-wing populists are gaining more and more say. After Pim Fortuyn came Wilders. "He won't get many followers, we don't have to worry about that." until the moment where the PVV became the largest party and where even Lidija's father is not insensitive to Wilders' populist hate speech. What is also well expressed in this documentary is the struggle of almost every immigrant. Where do you feel more at home? Even her son who was born in the Netherlands struggled with that.

From “There will never be war in the Netherlands again” until her son receives a letter from Defense stating that he has a military service obligation, which could become a conscription obligation in the event of a threat. These are strange times.

Translated from Dutch · View original

The film deals with the familiar uprooting of the refugee who no longer feels at home where they come from, but also feels at home in their new country. Besides the question of where one wants to be buried or which country one supports at the World Cup, documentary filmmaker Lidiya offers a palpable explanation for why she speaks Bosnian to her son, born in the Netherlands: the Bosnian "volim te" expresses her love more truly than the Dutch "ik hou van je" (I love you), which she only learned later, and conversely, "ik hou van Nederland" (I love the Netherlands) only sounds true to her in Dutch. But the film's message is primarily political: due to the trauma of the war in Bosnia, which arose because politicians fomented divisions between population groups, she is obsessed with politics and hypersensitive to politicians who foment division, like Wilders. To her dismay, the PVV becomes the largest party in the 2023 elections and, to make matters worse, her son receives a conscription letter from the Ministry of Defence and war (because of Russia) suddenly seems close: the Bosnia scenario that seemed unthinkable for the neat, boring Netherlands has suddenly become conceivable.

The film is thus a political warning – particularly against the PVV, and I think it's no coincidence that the film aired on TV a week before the new elections – and that seems a bit cheap, but the film is intelligent and well-made.

Translated from Dutch · View original

Lidija Zelovic was 21 when she escaped the Yugoslav civil war in 1993 with her Serbian father and Croatian mother and settled in the Netherlands. Using archive footage and home videos, primarily filmed by herself, she reflects on her life before and after 1993. She depicts the changes in her native country, but also those in the Netherlands, particularly regarding refugees and asylum seekers. The title refers to a pressing question: is the Netherlands now a home for her and her parents? Thanks to the clever editing and Zelovic's level-headed, sometimes ironic commentary, this weighty film is easily digestible and thought-provoking.

Translated from Dutch · View original