Mijn Oma is Activist
13 min documentary made by Tobias van Oosten, 2024
About the Film
Whilst going through a burnout, I struggled to face ongoing challenges in the world. What can I do to make impact? What is enough? When facing these questions, I turned to my grandma. She is tirelessly active: she demonstrates with the climate movement, helps refugees find housing, and writes protest letters to the city council. I decided to do research on my personal questions. This resulted in a film I made as part of VPRO’s program for aspiring filmmakers: Ongeschreven Regels.
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.
Methods
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 meaning I needed to really feel the meaning of the words when saying them in the microphone. 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.