FILM: A Fool's Paradise

In the road move A Fool's Paradise, South African-Dutch director Saskia Vredeveld journeys through South Africa and asks if she would still feel at home in that country. She follows in the footsteps of Dutch colonists and travels into the unknown. Her 1800-kilometre route takes her through breathtaking landscapes from Capetown to Amsterdam, along the border with Mozambique.

She visits places that sound familiar to her and us, but where she has never been before: Haarlem, Middelburg, Utrecht, Amersfoort, Rotteram. She witnesses poverty, unemployment, xenophobia, criminality and corruption. Vredeveld mainly remembers South Africa as a holiday destination. That she lived separate from "the others" felt normal to her at the time. No one in her circle questioned it. Did her youth under Apartheid turn her into a racist? Much changed for the better after the first democratic elections in 1994. But Vredeveld, like many others, struggles with shame. But she also feels hope and fears an uncertain future.

Watch the trailer.

Direction: Saskia Vredeveld
Documentary, Netherlands, 2019
Languages: Dutch, English, Afrikaans; Subtitled in Dutch.