Hetty Naaijkens-Retel Helmrich

Eline Flipse

It could be a documentary about martial arts. But in fact it is a documentary about aggression. And about spirituality. About values. It is, in essence, a film about paradoxes.

IFFR 2005

Eat Your Enemy, 

Time & Tide

Eat Your Enemy

Yuen Yan Ting

Story of the revolutionary model operas (yan ban xi) also extends to later adventures of the dancing and singing stars of these colourful propaganda musicals that were commissioned by Mrs Mao. In today's Chinam the films are once again appreciated as a nostalgic, campy art form.

Yang Ban Xi - De 8 modelwerken, 

Yang Ban Xi - De 8 modelwerken

Leonard Retel Helmrich

IFFR 2007

Promised Paradise, 

Rotterdam Perspective

Promised Paradise

Documentary about modern Chinese music after the Cultural Revolution.

IFFR 1996

oogst van de stilte, De

dutch perspective

De oogst van de stilte

Part two of the cinema-vérité trilogy by Retel Helmrich about modern Indonesia. A Christian widow with two Moslem sons tries to survive in the social and political chaos of Jakarta under the reign of an increasingly fundamentalist Islam.

Stand van de maan, 

Stand van de maan

Beautiful and occasionally shocking story of changes in Indonesia based on the lives of a widow and her sons.

IFFR 2025
30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025

Hetty Naaijkens-Retel Helmrich

Filmography