Europe’s twentysomethings in the cinema

A trip around the world in just ten days. That's what the International Film Festival Rotterdam is about. And this trip around the world included quite some interesting movies on Europe's twentysomethings. Flanders was represented by 'With Friends Like These', a movie on five friends in their twenties who are confronted with reality when one of them returns to the provincial town of St. Niklaas. The Slovenian movie 'L… Like Love' could be seen as an illusion of fiction where real people play their roles without confronting the truth. It illustrated how young immigrants from former Yugoslavia come to Prague in the search of a new life and love. 'Magnus' centered around a sickly kid in a loveless and selfish family in Estonia. When Magnus fails to die as expected at an early age, a new challenge awaits him. With a hysterical mother and a father who pays for his drug addiction by recruiting prostitutes to be shipped to Germany, he is left entirely to his own devices. Only his sister seems to have any sense of reality. But if we extent the definition to Europe there were also some very interesting movies from Central Asia. Especially 'Absurd and Absurdity', a film that takes a light-hearted look at the adventures of three Kyrgyz young men who each wrestle with the problems of this bizarre society they live in gave a fascinating insight on the Kyrgyz society. If you have a chance to watch some of these movies at a local cinema or film festival ..... well they're highly recommended.