Mijn Oma is Activist

13 min documentary made by Tobias van Oosten, 2024

Synopsis

Whilst going through a burnout, Tobias struggles to face ongoing challenges in the world. What can he do to make impact? What is enough? When facing these questions, he turns to his grandmother. She is tirelessly active: she demonstrates with the climate movement, helps refugees find housing, and writes protest letters to the city council. Tobias explores how his activist grandmother deals with these questions and finds energy and resilience in a changing world.

Festivals and Awards

2024 Bridge of Peace Film Festival - Best Debut Documentary 2024 Portugal Indie Film Festival - Selected 2025 Nederlands Vlaams Film Festival Tegenstroom - Selected

Press and TV

2024 TV premiere on Dutch broadcasting company NPO2🎥 2024 Radio Interview on NPO Radio 2 Spijkers met Koppen 🎤 2025 Interview with magazine Lover 📚

Credits

Directed by Tobias van Oosten; Camera by Benito Strangio; Sound by Wouter Veldhuis; Editing by Mark Lindenberg; Grading by Laurent Fluttert; Production by Mathijs Jorritsma; Soundmixing by Jeroen Nadorp; Production assistant Aurora Koeckhoven; Final editorial by Niki Padidar.

This film was made as part of VPRO’s Ongeschreven Regels.

Auto Ethnography

During my burnout, I quit my job and decided to research the questions that had led me there. This process, as intensive as it was, culminated in months of personal psychological exploration and research. The film emerged as a product of this research, and as a way to turn my findings into something practical, just as my grandmother advised me to do.

The starting point of this process was always my own frustration and psychological blockades. However, I soon realised that many other young people around me were experiencing similar questions and burnouts. While the project began as something deeply personal, it gradually transcended into something larger than myself, becoming a way of capturing my grandmother’s wisdom and a way of sharing it with others who might benefit from it.

From Diary Notes to Voice Over

In order to create a voice over, one usually record his or her own voice and edits it fittingly over film. I quickly realized this would be quite the challenge for my project. Firstly, due to the fact that I wanted my voice to sound convincing, but not corny. Secondly, because in order to do, so I felt like I needed to act it out. And I am not an actor. This meant I needed to find words that in itself already carried meaning with them. With the help of my tutor at the Ongeschreven Regels programme, we decided to arrange old diary notes from difficult times, during my burnout, and alter them to introduce the film. In this way, the words carried the meaning of difficult times, carrying them over to the film.