Levenslied

The film ballad of being revolves around a group of men who find a 'home' in De Walenburg, a centre for the homeless in Amsterdam that accommodates a variety of people. We follow Roberto, Ronnie, Kees, Bob, and Jan in their daily pursuits in and around De Walenburg. This 'tranche de vie' of a group of uncommon people guides the viewer from initial distance to final intimacy.
Ballad of being is a poetic, warm, and amusing portrait of people we normally frown upon, because they are strange, because they are deviant, because they frighten us, because they are 'different'. Without voice-over, the film gives us a chance to get to know these people in their own virtue, in their collectiveness and in their loneliness, in their joy and in their sorrow. The concepts 'normal' and 'strange' are dismantled from their regular meaning. The people in ballad of being gradually become the main characters on the sometimes bizarre stage of a world that is ours. Their lives become stories, and stories are there to be told.