A rigorous impression of three boys in a juvenile detention center trying to keep their heads above water. Damian confronts his warders with intelligent, sharp comebacks. Abou has a tendency to be rebellious, and the generally quiet Germain raises hell in his cell when it turns out he has unintentionally broken one of the countless rules. A Quiet Place shows a world of difficult reeducation from the viewpoints of the young detainees, including the many clashes and the constant imposition of order. The boys themselves read the prison incident reports aloud. Alongside neutral observation, there’s also space for more intimate moments and personal – even poetic – outpourings. The young men are given cameras in their cells. Although we never see their faces, in this way they are able to reveal something about themselves: a memory of a goldfish, or the death of a best friend.
A Quiet Place / Hier Is het Nooit Stil
A film by
Sjoerd Oostrik
Biography
Sjoerd Oostrik is a Dutch documentary filmmaker based between Los Angeles and Amsterdam. Sjoerd received his MA in history at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen before moving on to study Documentary Directing at the Netherlands Film Academy in Amsterdam. With his graduation film ‘Destiny’ he won the Wildcard Award of the Dutch Film Fund for the most promising graduating documentary director. He directed several short- and medium length documentaries that screened at internationally renowned festivals like Locarno Film Festival, IDFA, FESPACO, Sao Paulo ISFF and Dokfest München. In 2014 he won the Media Fund Prize at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) for his latest project ‘A Quiet Place’.
In addition to his work as a director, Sjoerd is an adjunct assistant professor in documentary filmmaking at UCLA, a grant advisor for the Dutch Media Fund, and a guest lecturer at the Dutch Film Academy in Amsterdam.
Filmography
- A Quiet Place (2016) – feature documentary
- Kookaburra Love (2014) – short documentary
- Little Mo (2013) – short documentary
- Youth of Today (2012) – short documentary
- Destiny (2011) – short documentary
