Draft:Aliona van der Horst

Aliona van der Horst is the daughter of a Dutch father and a Russian mother and grew up in the Netherlands. Her father studied chemistry in Moscow in the 1960's and met her Russian mother, an engineer, in 1967. For almost five years, her mother was denied the right to emigrate to the Netherlands to join her husband.

About this troublesome period, where their private life got mixed up with big politics, Aliona made the documentary After the spring of '68, a story about love' (Dutch title: Na de lente van '68, een kleine liefdesgeschiedenis/ moet dit er in?).' It received the Dutch Academy Award (2002) for Best Dutch TV documentary

Aliona holds a Master degree in Russian Literature at the University of Amsterdam. During her studies, she worked as an interpreter of Russian, which eventually brought her to study at the Dutch Film and TV Academy in 1993 to direct documentaries, where she graduated in 1997 with the much acclaimed The lady with the white hat, about an Ukrainian language teacher from Odesa who got involved in the dissident underground movement and was punished for this by being locked up in a mental institution. In this film there are contributions from the famous Ukrainian psychiatrist and human right fighter Semen Gluzman. The film deals with the abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union for political purposes and was awarded David L. Wolper Student Documentary Award{{Cite web|url=https://www.collegexpress.com/scholarships/david-l-wolper-student-documentary-achievement-award/16439/|title=David L. Wolper Student Documentary Achievement Award | International Documentary Association | CollegeXpress|website=www.collegexpress.com}} at the International Documentary Association (IDA{{Cite web|url=https://www.documentary.org/|title=Homepage | International Documentary Association|date=May 15, 2025|website=www.documentary.org}}1998, Los Angelos, USA, got the Tuschinski Award 1997 and the Silver Spire Award at the San Francisco Film Festival 1998.

Dutch film critic and philosopher Dana Linsen (2024) writes in her essay about Aliona van de Horsts' body of work:

"Aliona van der Horsts' films are essayistic and classically documentary at the same time. They arise from thorough research and an observational way of working, often in close collaboration with others. (...) Absence always conjures presence in her films by employing (...) artistic interventions. Often but not exclusively under repressive regimes, for the excavation of the past and liberating perspectives on what it means to be a human. Through these artistic crossovers meditative spaces are created in which the speculative gives voice to the unspeakable".{{Cite web|url=https://www.alionavanderhorst.com/about|title=ABOUT|website=Aliona van der Horst}}

A PASSION FOR THE HERMITAGE

A passion for the Hermitage (2003)/The hermitage dwellers (2006) is both a 6 part series and a feature doc behind the scenes of the famous Hermitage museum of St Petersburg. The theme of the series is how the employees saved art during war and repression, and also how they themselves were saved by art. The series was successfully broadcasted by Dutch public broadcaster AVRO{{Cite web|url=https://www.uitzendinggemist.net/programmas/2620-Passie_voor_de_hermitage.html|title=Passie voor de Hermitage gemist? Bekijk hier alle uitzendingen terug. Passie voor de Hermitage Uitzending gemist.|website=www.uitzendinggemist.net}}. A passion for the Hermitage' was awarded the Dutch Academy Award/Art and culture in 2003 and the feature documentary 'The Hermitage Dwellers' got the Grand Prize at the Montréal International Festival of Films on Art 2006.

VOICES OF BAM

Van der Horsts' second theatrical feature documentary Voices of Bam (89', 2006) that she co-directed with Maasja Ooms, is been hailed for its innovative style, using 'inner voices' of the inhabitants of the Iranian city of Bam, that was destroyed by an earthquake in 2003. Shot on 16mm on a Arri-mini with a rig, made it possible for the camera to wander like a ghost through the destroyed city. Jay Weissberg (2006) writes in Variety{{Cite web|url=https://variety.com/|title=Variety|website=Variety}} about this doc:

"Using scratched and dust-covered photos to evoke happier times, Dutch directors Aliona van der Horst and Maasja Ooms give an impressionistic rendering of life in a destroyed city in Voices of Bam'....Despite docu's amorphous structure, pic remains a poetic essay on loss and the difficulties of rebirth, making it ideal fest fare".{{Cite web|url=https://variety.com/results/?q=Aliona+van+der+horst&size=n_10_n&sort-field=relevance&sort-direction=desc|title=Search Results|date=February 27, 2013}}.

BORIS RYZHY

Her next documentary Boris Ryzhy (59', 2008) about the Russian poet of the perestroika, was made in close collaboration with Maasja Ooms and deals with the search for the reasons of the poets' suicide in 2001. It premiered at IDFA where Geoffrey Macnab in Screendaily{{Cite web|url=https://www.screendaily.com/expose-of-the-burmese-dictatorship-win-amsterdam-doc-award/4042180.article|title=Expose of the Burmese dictatorship win Amsterdam doc award|first=Geoffrey|last=Macnab2008-11-30T17:26:00+00:00|website=Screen}} wrote that it was 'one of the best liked films in the festival' and got the IDFA Midlength doc award in 2008.

Film critic Marina Akhmetzhanova (2022) wrote:

"Starting off as an exploration of the poet's life and death, the film becomes as much a portrait of his home of Yekaterinburg and Russia as a whole, as a portrait of Ryzhy himself. In particular, the director explores Russia as both the place that gave birth to Ryzhy and shaped his poetic sensibility, and the place that, as she suggests, eventually killed him".{{Cite web|url=https://www.new-east-archive.org/articles/show/13395/aliona-van-der-horst-poet-boris-ryzhy-documentary-film|title=Aliona van der Horst explores the life and death of poet Boris Ryzhy | Film of the week|first=Maria|last=Akhmetzhanova|website=New East Digital Archive}}

Dana Linssen (2024) writes in her essay:

"After the death of her father, she recently found a student film in which she interviews people about their first memories. It was perhaps the missing link to realize how important the themes of time, memory and recollection are in her works. In her first major film, a portrait of the Russian poet Boris Ryzhy (2008), who died young, she had nothing but vague black-and-white images and memories of his family and friends to build her film on. That and his words, that describe a time of transition".

• Edinburgh Filmfestival, Great Britain 2009, Best Feature Documentary Award
• Montréal, International festival of films on Art, Canada 2009 Jury Prize
• Netherlands Film Festival, Dutch Film Critics award, nominee golden calf Best Editing (Maasja Ooms)
• International Film Festival, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, worldpremiere
• IDFA, Amsterdam, The Netherlands 2009, Silver Wolf award

WATER CHILDREN

Water Children (73' 2011) premiered in the International competition of Dok Leipzig and got a special mention there and was awarded the Feature Documentary award at DOXA. It was the opening film of International Women Documentary festival in Cairo and of EDOC festival in Quito, Ecuador, which is a brave festival choice as it deals with taboo topics like menstruation and childlessness. It is a portrait of multidisciplinary artist Tomoko Mukaiyama, the installation of 12,000 white dresses in a rural Japanese town, the biological cycles of life and death, and a mature and forgiving meditation on the great unanswerable questions.

The film was praised by Dutch film critic Gawie Keyser (2011):

"An unforgettable, claustrophobic film (...) as sensuous as Werner Herzog's early work, or everything by Terrence Malick, especially his latest film Tree of Life. All these films explore the meaning of universal themes around life and death, birth and degeneration in a visual, poetic way. Watching it represents in itself a ritual, almost a kind of mourning, or an extended moment of the sublime".{{Cite web|url=https://www.groene.nl/artikel/versteend-leven|title=Versteend leven|date=July 13, 2011|website=De Groene Amsterdammer}}

"A wonderful paradox: By giving herself a prominent place, she actually cancels herself out in this bittersweet documentary".{{Cite web|url=https://www.volkskrant.nl/cultuur-media/water-children~b4a7194f/|title=}}

"Van der Horst is a documentary filmmaker of the observing school. It is not about the I of the maker, but about the other. When she then does film her own hands, it already feels like a violation of her fragile private domain. You catch your breath from so much intimacy. Just as reluctantly, she films the testimonies of the women who collaborated on the project and donated their menstrual blood for what became a grand epic about motherhood, miscarriages and menopause. Through that way of discovery and observation that is as searching as it is confident, she penetrates what is probably still one of the biggest taboos, menstruation, and with it Van der Horst's own movingly sincere thoughts about what femininity and womanhood actually mean".

• International Women Documentary festival in Cairo, Egypt 2011, Opening film
• Sarasota Film Festival,{{Cite web|url=https://www.sarasotafilmfestival.com/|title=Sarasota Film Festival 2025|website=Sarasota Film Festival}} Florida USA 2012
• EDOC{{Cite web|url=https://www.doxafestival.ca/|title=Western Canada's Largest Documentary Film Festival | DOXA Documentary Film Festival|website=www.doxafestival.ca}} festival in Quito, Ecuador 2012, , Opening film
• Vancouver DOXA Documentary Film Festival, Canada 2012 |
• International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), The Netherlands 2011
• Yamagata Film Festival, Japan 2011{{Cite web|url=https://www.yidff.jp/2011/cat109/11c129-e.html|title=YIDFF: Publications: YIDFF 2011 Official Catalog|website=www.yidff.jp}}
• Dok Leipzig{{Cite web|url=https://www.dok-leipzig.de/en|title=DOK Leipzig » 27 Oct – 2 Nov 2025|date=May 12, 2025|website=www.dok-leipzig.de}} 2011 I Reykjavik Shorts & Docs Festivaland, Iceland 2012
• Salem Film Festival,{{Cite web|url=https://www.salemfilmfest.com/|title=Salem Film Fest|date=March 30, 2025|website=Salem Film Fest}} Massachusetts, USA{{Cite web|url=http://www.waterchildren.nl/en/|title=Water Children}}

LOVE IS POTATOES

Love is potatoes (90', 2017) is Aliona van der Horsts' most personal work. It premiered in the International Competition of Dok Leipzig, receiving a Honorable Mention and the Interreligious Jury Award.

It was awarded the Golden Calf for Best Feature Documentary at the Netherlands Film festival and the Chrystal film award for a succesfull cinema release in the Netherlands. In the academic paper Filial Care and Familial Postmemory (2023) Melinda Blos-Jáni writes about the concept of Postmemory in the film:

"Despite severing the head of the hydra of indexicality – i.e. avoiding the evidential use of photography and other media, the metaleptic jump into the world of animation preserves the markers of materiality, by using highly abstract, yet haptic images. Through these conjunctions the film mediates the traumatic experiences of Russian women under socialism, but also positions the filmmaker as a woman who takes care of this past as postmemory, through collecting and archiving not just images but also producing haptic postmemory objects, such as her film".{{Cite web |date= |title=Melinda Blos-Jáni, Acta Univ. Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, 24 (2023) 80–91 |url=https://acta.sapientia.ro/content/docs/4-421776.pdf}}.

"The central question of Love is Potatoes is formulated by Aliona's cousin Tania:"What has life done to our mothers?" It is a personal document that painfully exposes the emotional gap between Russia and the West, between needy mothers and prosperous daughters, within the 36 square meters of the wooden shack near Moscow where her mother and aunts grew up".{{Cite web|url=https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2017/10/10/met-een-volle-buik-begrijp-je-hongerlijders-niet-13365815-a1576676|title=Met een volle buik begrijp je hongerlijders niet|first=Coen van|last=Zwol|work=NRC |date=October 10, 2017|via=www.nrc.nl}}.

• DOK Leipzig for Documentary and Animated Film, Germany 2017, won the International Competiton, the Interreligious Jury Award, Honorary Mention in the International Competition
• Artdocfest-Russian Open Documentary Film Festival, Russia 2018 Won: Grand Prix
• Ambulante Film Festival, Mexico 2018
• It's All True International Documentary Film Festival,{{Cite web|url=https://etudoverdade.com.br/en/home/|title=It's All True – International Documentary Film Festival|website=etudoverdade.com.br}} Brazil 2018, International Competition
• 
Crossing Europe-European Panorama Doc fest,{{Cite web|url=https://www.crossingeurope.at|title=Crossing Europe | Crossing Europe|website=www.crossingeurope.at}} Austria 2018
• International Documentary Film Festival München,{{Cite web|url=https://www.dokfest-muenchen.de|title=DOK.fest München|website=DOK.fest München}} Germany 2018
• Beldocs International Documentary Film Festival,{{Cite web|url=https://www.beldocs.rs|title=Beldocs | Međunarodni festival dokumentarnog filma|website=Beldocs}} Serbia 2018
• EDOC-International Documentary Film Festival,{{Cite web|url=https://festivaledoc.org/|title=Festival EDOC | Festival Internacional de Cine Documental "Encuentros del Otro Cine"}} Ecuador 2018, Official Selection
• Millennium Docs Against Gravity Film Festival,{{Cite web|url=https://mdag.pl/22/en/warszawa/homepage|title=22. Movies Festival Millennium Docs Against Gravity|date=April 14, 2025|website=22. Movies Festival Millennium Docs Against Gravity}} Poland 2018, Official Selection
• Biografilm Festival-International Celebration of Lives,{{Cite web|url=https://www.biografilm.it/en/|title=Biografilm|website=www.biografilm.it}} Bologna, Italy 2018, Life Tales Award
• Documentarist Istanbul Documentary Days,{{Cite web|url=https://www.documentarist.org/en/|title=DOCUMENTARIST 18th Istanbul Documentary Days | 14-19 June 2025}} Turkey 2018, Official Selection
• Guth Gafa International Documentary Film Festival,{{Cite web|url=http://guthgafa.com/|title=Guth Gafa | International Documentary Festival}} Ireland 2018, Won: Dutch Directors Guild Award
• Nederlands Film Festival, Netherlands 2018, won Best Dutch Feature Documentary
• Meetings in Siberia-International Festival of Documentary Films,{{Cite web|url=https://siberiadoc.ru/en|title=Home - SiberiaDOC|website=siberiadoc.ru}} Russia 2018, Official Selection
• Astra Film Festival,{{Cite web|url=https://www.astrafilm.ro/en|title=Home - Astra Film Festival 2025|website=www.astrafilm.ro}} Romania 2018, competiton | La Orquídea Film Festival, Ecuador 2018, Out of competion: Gender Section
• Panorama Internacional Coisa de Cinema,{{Cite web|url=https://panorama.coisadecinema.com.br/|title=XX Panorama Internacional Coisa de Cinema - O Cinema no Centro|first=Duda|last=Itajahy|website=XX Panorama Internacional Coisa de Cinema}} Brazil 2018, won Best Feaure Film
• Beirut International Womens Film Festival,{{Cite web|url=https://beirutwomenfilmfestival.com/|title=Beirut International Women Film Festival|first=Beirut International Women Film|last=Festival|website=Beirut International Women Film Festival}} Lebanon 2019, won Best Documentary
• Femcine9,{{Cite web|url=https://femcine.cl/|title=Femcine|website=femcine.cl}} Chile 2019, won Best Feature Length | Animavì-Animation Cinema And Poetic Art Festival, Italy 2019
• FIDBA{{Cite web|url=https://fidba.org/2024/|title=FIDBA 2024}} - Buenos Aires International Documentary Film Festival, Argentina 2019, Official Selection
• History Film Festival,{{Cite web|url=https://www.filmfestivals.com/festival/history_film_festival|title=History Film Festival|website=www.filmfestivals.com}} Croatia 2019, Official Selection, won Grand Prix.

TURN YOUR BODY TO THE SUN

Her next film, Turn your body to the sun (2021, 90') also deals with the traumatic past of the Soviet heritage, through the eyes of a daughter searching for her fathers' past. It's An evocation of a time when man's cruelty seemed to know no bounds, or repercussions as Fionnuala Halligan writes in ScreenDaily{{Cite web|url=https://www.screendaily.com/reviews/turn-your-body-to-the-sun-idfa-review/5165414.article|title='Turn Your Body To The Sun': IDFA Review|first=Fionnuala|last=Halligan2021-11-23T22:25:00+00:00|website=Screen}} And Peter Bradsaw writes in the Guardian (2024):

"Dutch Estonian novelist Sana Valiulina investigates the life of her father who was compelled to betray Stalin's Soviet Union by serving the Nazi war machine (...) it is an extraordinary tale, arguably worthy of Boris Pasternak and David Lean'. The leap between the present and the past, between the first person docu footage and the archival images result in poetic, essayistic visuals, and create incongruous moods on the level of spectatorship. While the personal archiveology becomes a narrative stimuli for the filmmaker immersed in his/her own story, they also elicit "another kind of empathy" with a wider, collective appeal for the viewer".

"Though Sana has lived in the Netherlands for thirty years and is used to communicating in Dutch, she prefers to speak in Russian for the film — as she puts it, because she wants her father to understand her. The notion that Turn Your Body to the Sun is a dialogue not only with the audience but with an ancestor now deceased in order to come to terms with their life underscores that documentary cinema not only records the past but has the cathartic potential to reconfigure its meaning and heal its legacy of trauma. As she addresses her father as a traitor, we sense her complex relationship to his actions, which are difficult to justify on moral grounds, and made more incomprehensible by a prevailing culture of silence and shame. The limits of possible resistance, and the ultimate culpability of the state for the lack of a future left to men who had been drafted against their will and risked their lives in an operation they had not been able to win, are thorny areas the documentary presents with frank openness but makes no pretense of ethically resolving. By the close of this powerful exploration into the meaning of allegiance and identity in wartime, one question by Sana's father remains hanging in the air: «Did I betray my fatherland? Or was I betrayed by my fatherland"?{{Cite web|url=https://www.moderntimes.review/turn-your-body-to-the-sun/|title=The soldiers who refused to die|first=Carmen|last=Gray|date=November 21, 2021}}

"Turn Your Body to the Sun is a 'Vatersuche', a monument to the monstrously treated prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. As such, it is a kind of counterpoint to 'Muttersuche' Love is Potatoes, a monument to Russian peasantry. The latter film revolved around fundamental misunderstanding between Aliona, who grew up in the Netherlands, and her stubborn mother Zoya, and focused on the 36 square metres of a peasant house where her mother and aunts grew up - you could almost smell the damp and mould. Instead, in Turn Your Body to the Sun, everything is in motion, just like father Sandar at the time. We see Sana and her sister Dinar on the train or metro talking about the traumas he kept silent about. Out of guilt or shame, because he preferred to forget".{{Cite web|url=https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2022/06/14/een-leven-vermalen-door-stalin-en-hitler-a4133379|title=Een leven vermalen door Stalin en Hitler|first=Coen van|last=Zwol|work=NRC |date=June 14, 2022|via=www.nrc.nl}}

Turn your body to the sun was nominated for the Prix Italia 2023{{Cite web|url=https://www.rai.it/prixitalia/|title=PRIX ITALIA|website=www.rai.it}}

• Mumbai International Film Festival, India, 2022, Golden Conch Award
• DocAviv, Israel, 2022
• True/False Festival, Columbia USA, 2022, Nominated{{Cite web|url=https://truefalse.org/about/archives/2022-archives/|title=2022}}
• Biografilm Festival, Bologna, Italy, 2022, Nominated{{Cite web|url=https://www.biografilm.it/assets/BIOGRAFILM2022/BIO22_CATALOGO_WEB-2022|title=BiograFilm Festival}}
• Thessaloniki International Documentary Film Festival,{{Cite web|url=https://www.filmfestival.gr/en/documentary-festival|title=Thessaloniki Documentary Festival|website=www.filmfestival.gr}} Greece 2022 Nominated
• Parnu Film Festival,{{Cite web|url=https://www.chaplin.ee/|title=Pärnu filmifestival – Filmifestival}} Estiona, 2022
• FARAD Film Festival,{{Cite web|url=https://www.farad.ro/en/|title=Festival de Film Documentar|website=www.farad.ro}} Romania, 2022
• Documentarist Istanbul, Turky 2022{{Cite web|url=https://www.documentarist.org/2022/|title=DOCUMENTARIST 15. İstanbul Belgesel Günleri | 25-30 Haziran 2022}}
• Ambulante Mexico film festival, Mexico 2022
• Inconvenient Films,{{cite web | url=https://www.humanrightsfilmnetwork.org/filmfestival/human-rights-film-festival-inconvenient-films | title=Human Rights Film Festival: Inconvenient Films | Human Rights Film Network }} The Netherlands, 2022
• Palić Film Festival, Serbia, 2022
• Hot Springs International Film Festival,{{Cite web|url=https://hsdfi.org|title=34th Annual Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival|website=hsdfi.org}} USA 2022
• Verzió International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival,{{Cite web|url=https://www.verzio.org/en|title=VERZIO Film Festival|website=verzio.org}} Budapest, Hongary, 2022
• Message to Man International Film Festival, St. Petersburg, Russia, 2022, Silver Centaur Award, Student Award
• Muestra de Cine Internacional Memoria Verdad Justicia,{{Cite web|url=https://www.memoriaverdadjusticia.com.gt/|title=Muestra de Cine Internacional Memoria Verdad Justicia | Guatemala|website=Memoria Verdad Justicia}} Ciudad de Guatemala, Guatemala, 2023
• Crossing Europe Film Festival, Linz, Austria 2024.{{Cite web|url=https://www.crossingeurope.at/en/film/turn_your_body_to_the_sun_1|title=Turn Your Body to the Sun | Crossing Europe|website=www.crossingeurope.at}}

GERLACH, the last farmer

Gerlach (76', 2023) is a first collaboration with Dutch director Luuk Bouwman and was five years in the making. It is Aliona van der Horsts' first feature film in the Netherlands. It got the Chrystal film award for arthouse cinema succes.

GERLACH is a loving and humorous portrait of arable farmer Gerlach, who has been farming in the shadow of Amsterdam Airport for sixty years. Around him, he has seen everything change. His simple wooden house is now wedged in between a Shell petrol station, a McDonalds outlet and various distribution centers. With great dedication he cares for his beets and grains, while property developers eye his land and climate change disrupts his harvest. Despite everything that comes his way, Gerlach stands tall with his down-to-earth humor, helped by his loving brothers and friends. His little house is the raindrop in which the world is reflected, existentialist and absurdist.{{Cite web|url=https://www.docmakers.nl/films/gerlach|title=Docmakers}}

• IDFA, The Netherlands 2023, Winner best Dutch Documentary Award
• Crystel Film Award 2023, The Netherlands
• Nominated for Duth Directors Award (DDG)
• Crossing Europe Film festival, Linz Austria 2024
• Biografilm festival, Italy 2024, Nominated
• Documentarist Istanbul Documentary Days, Turkey 2024
• Shanghai International Film Festival, China 2024
• European Film Festival, Palic, Serbia 2024
• Netherlands Film Festival, winner of Forum for Directors VEVAM Award
• CineEco festival,https://cineeco.pt/pt/en/ Portugal 2024, Honorable Mention
• Eberswalde Film Festival,{{Cite web|url=https://filmfest-eberswalde.de/wordpress/en/|title=NEWS}} Provinziale, Germany 2024, Golden Distel Award
• Budapest Internation Documentary Filmfestival{{Cite web|url=https://bidf.hu|title=BIDF | Budapesti Nemzetközi Dokumentumfilm Fesztivál|website=bidf.hu}} 2025

• 2000 Dutch Academy award, After the spring of '68, a story about love (58')
• 2006 Grand Prix FIFA Montreal, 'The Hermitage Dwellers' (74')
• 2006 Special Jury award at Tribeca International Film festival, 'Voices of Bam' (90'), codirected with Maasja Ooms
• 2008 Silver Wolf Award, IDFA, Boris Ryzhy (59')
• 2008 Grand Prix Edinburg Filmfestival, Boris Ryzhy (59')
• 2011 DOXA Grand Prix, Water Children (73')
• 2017 Golden Calf for Best Dutch Feature at Nederlands Film Festival, 'Love is patotoes' (90')
• 2021 MIFF Award, Turn your body to the Sun (93")
• 2023 Best Dutch Documentary Award IDFA, Gerlach, the last farmer (74'), codirected with Luuk Bouwman

{{Reflist}}

• [https://www.alionavanderhorst.com/ Aliona van der Horst]
• Aliona van der Horst at IMDB: [https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0395466/ Aliona van der Horst | Director, Writer, Cinematographer]
• Docmakers, all women collective, based in the Netherlands: [https://www.docmakers.nl/ One moment, please...]