Info

Zoekjaar (2025)

Name: Zoekjaar
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2025-09-08T21:33:59+02:00
Rating: 1.83

Documentary | 70 minutes

1,83 3 votes

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1 comment

Genre: Documentary

Duration: 70 minuten

Alternative title: Search Year

Country: Netherlands

Directed by: Joris Koptod Nioky

This movie is not available on US streaming services.

Zoekjaar plot

International students seeking work in the Netherlands after their studies can apply for a residence permit for a search period, a search year. During this year, no work permit is required to work in the Netherlands. Nadh must prove within one year that he is an asset to our society as a performance artist. If he fails, he faces deportation. We are all part of a bureaucratic system. But because Nadh approaches life and his art with playful wonder and experimentation, he clashes with the bureaucratic rules even more fiercely.

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mrklm

11374 messages
9897 votes

16 August 2025 at 08:46

Nioky met the Chinese performance artist Nadh Lingyun Cao at Queerclub De Trut in Amsterdam. Nadh graduated in the Netherlands and is eager to settle there. He is only allowed to do so if he meets several requirements within one year (the search year in the title). Nadh is an intuitive, creative mind and an emotional person, and becomes completely entangled in the tangled web of the tax authorities and subsidy applications. Nioky, who undergoes the same bureaucratic process in his attempts to secure funding for this film, casts himself in a prominent supporting role. What was originally intended as a portrait of a unique artist increasingly became a general report on the difficulties of making a living as an artist in the Netherlands. This wavering between two opinions does not benefit the final result.