A Better Life

Karin Junger, winner of the 1988 Joris Ivens Award for films Moroccan fathers and sons in the Netherlands. The fathers belonged to the first generation of immigrant workers who came to Holland in the 1960s. Often without their families, which led to a long-lasting separation between fathers and children. And when the rest of the family finally followed, there was a lot of mutual misunderstanding. A father explains how a friend had persuaded him to come to the Netherlands. He intended to stay for two years and earn enough money to open a shop in Morocco. But he stayed in Holland, working at a conveyor belt for years. Another lived for years in a hothouse, and thought his employer's dog had a better life than he. The sons often considered their fathers losers, or found themselves unable to realise their fathers' dreams of good education and good jobs in their new homeland. Junger filmed in the Netherlands and Morocco, and hopes her film will induce a dialogue between sons and fathers. The leitmotif is a rap song that one protagonist's son practises, aided by professional rapper Salah Edin, in which they explain how their fathers let themselves be exploited by Dutch employers in order to offer their sons a better future.