Anak Indië is a film about resilience, identity and a shared past—a past that is still palpable and visible in the Netherlands today.

The long-awaited new film by Hetty Naaijkens–Retel Helmrich, director of Klanken van Oorsprong, Buitenkampers and Contractpensions. Using collage animations, music, 8mm archive footage and personal stories of famous Dutch-Indonesians such as Yvonne Keuls, Adriaan van Dis and Wieteke van Dort, the film shows how they had to build a new life. Photographer Claude Vanheye shows his path to success, a road that was anything but paved, while illustrator Thé Tjong-Khing emphasises the feeling of being displaced: he feels neither Chinese nor Dutch. The archive footage illustrates the feeling that many people with roots in the Dutch East Indies have: the feeling of being born between two cultures.

Anak Indië is a moving and humorous documentary about Dutch-Indonesian heritage in which the present and the past come together in a mosaic of stories.