Desi

Desi is an eleven-year-old girl. Every day when school is over and everyone goes home, she still has to find a place to sleep for the night by using her mobile phone. Perhaps at her paternal grandmother's house, perhaps at her maternal grandfather's house, or again on the houseboat where her father is quarrelling with his girlfriend Esther. Desi's mother committed suicide when Desi was a year and a half. Desi does not have a real family now, but she is not a dejected child. She bursts out laughing when she and her girlfriend Taina enact the quarrels between her father and Esther with a couple of dolls. At intimate moments like this, the camera comes very close, but director Maria Ramos usually follows her main character at a distance, without any comments or interviews. In 2000, Desi won the Audience Award at the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam and at the Netherlands Film Festival 2001 it was awarded a Golden Calf for Best Full-length Documentary.