Hopsa Heisasa

In my youth I often felt excluded from children of my own age because I didn’t know how to fit in. So like Willem – through drawings, costumes and stuffed animals – I made up fairy tales; all the while whistling, giving my escapism a soundtrack. Somehow I intuitively knew this was my only way to make sense of the incomprehensible; of the not knowing why some things are the way they are.
Of course, this wasn’t enough to substitute real friendships. So as I grew older – in the hope of fitting in – I adapted and because of that, slowly and surely, my intuitive Inner Child – along with its memories of those grand adventures – faded away.
But when I met a couple of refugee children everything came back! In them I recognised the longing for friendship, the insecurity some of them had of adapting to a new and unknown world but also the intuitive and creative means they thought up to connect with each other: through stories and songs.

That’s why Hopsa Heisasa offers a different perspective on the refugee crisis: that of a western child who looks at the world through unprejudiced eyes, but who is old enough to understand the yearning for love and solace. One of my favourite filmmakers Hayao Miyazaki once said: “Children need to see something incomprehensible and they’ll understand it later.” This inspired me to make a fairy tale. Because I owe it to my Inner Child – and to everyone else who had to sacrifice his Inner Child to adapt – to relive the experience of the inexplicable. Because the inexplicable arouses the viewer’s intuition which motivates him to seek the answers within himself. I believe that telling a film which enables the audience to do this will make the viewing of a film a more personal and meaningful experience.