_{Totem by Sander Burger}

Like so many Dutch films aimed at kids, Sander Burger’s Totem, produced by Volya Films and opening the 36th edition of Cinekid, takes its audience very seriously. The film concerns 11-year-old Ama, the daughter of Senegalese asylum seekers but someone who nevertheless feels completely Dutch. She is top student in her class and can’t wait to compete in the upcoming swimming trials, desperate to one day emulate the achievements of her hero Ranomi Kromowidjojo, the leading Dutch swimmer.

But Ama’s world is thrown into turmoil after the arrest of her mother and brother, who seem destined for deportation. What’s more her father goes on the run from the authorities, and so Ama sets off on an odyssey through Rotterdam to find him, in the process discovering her roots with the help of her totem, a giant porcupine, and all the time unaware that support for her cause is growing among the cityfolk, led by her (former best) friend Thijs.

A long time ago, even before the pandemic, Burger read a news article that stated how 40,000 illegal migrants were living in Rotterdam, the majority of whom had immersed themselves relatively seamlessly into daily life in the city, holding down jobs and attending school, like Ama. But the director wanted to know more, who they were, where they were from, and what was life for them like in Rotterdam under the constant threat of deportation.

He freely admits that his investigation could have taken any form. He contemplated making a documentary about the subject. Or the film could have been made as a Dardennes Brothers-type piece of social realism. “But if you make a Dardennes kind of film, which I love, you also know which people watch those films and that they already have a certain view on the topic. I wanted to make something that was much broader.”

So he decided to target an altogether different demographic – kids. He is the father himself of young children and a big fan of news slots for kids on public TV which compress serious news into manageable but highly informative items. “Wouldn't it be great to make a film about the subject to explain to my children a little bit about the situation?” Burger says. And so he did, in the process joining the likes of Simone van Dusseldorp, Dennis Bots, Tamar van den Dop and Ben Sombogaarts as directors who have consistently raised the bar in terms of top quality serious output to a highly discerning and savvy youth audience.

In the film Burger tests his audience further with the magical realist concept of the titular totem, an external and physical manifestation of the inner-self that takes the form of an animal. In the case of Ama, this is a giant porcupine which is, she is told, “stubborn, loyal, very inquisitive, extremely intelligent, can beat a lion and a very good swimmer.”

The porcupine is animatronic, certainly not CGI, and what’s more it is huge, so much so that it stopped the traffic in Rotterdam when the production took to the city’s streets. For Burger, animatronics ticked all the boxes. It was easier for Ama (played by Amani-Jean Philippe) to act opposite a real character than a piece of green screen. Also, animatronics don’t age in the way CGI does, Burger argues, citing how ET has not dated one iota, whereas the CGI in the original Jurassic Park looks like it came from the age of the dinosaur.

“I'm a big Jim Henson fan (The Muppet Movie, Labyrinth). Those films still look great because they are not computer-generated, but because they are real. It was really a childhood dream for me to work with animatronics,” he stresses.

On October 12 the film will premiere simultaneously at Cinekid and in 28 cities across The Netherlands and, for the first time, in Curaçao, before a nationwide release October 13. “That is a really great start for the film,” Burger concludes.

Totem is produced by Volya Films (NL) in co-production with Leitwolf Filmproduktion (DE) and Tarantula (LU). Sales are being handled by SKOOP Media. Totem is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund and Production Incentive. For more information on Cinekid 2022, click here.
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