Buurman Abdi

Abdi spent his childhood in Mogadishu during the civil war. Now he designs and makes furniture in the Netherlands. In the past, he repeatedly witnessed violence and war crimes. After he emigrated, he broke the law himself and ended up in prison. His neighbor happened to be filmmaker Douwe Dijkstra. Together, they decided to reconstruct and take a better look at Abdi's childhood and youth full of traumatizing incidents. Besides not-always-reliable memories, their tools include Dijkstra's special-effects studio with a green screen and many miniature models. The film is both a biography and a stimulating deconstruction of an effort to grasp someone else's past. (Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival)