Stories from Lakka Beach

"Ten years after the atrocities of the rebel war, refugees from Sierra Leone still don't dare to return to their country", says Aminata from the Sierra Leonean village of Lakka. This film features five residents of this small coastal town, surrounded by white sandy beaches, near Sierra Leone's capital Freetown. We follow a fisherman, a woodworker, a beach club owner, an R&B musician, and a local politician as they go about their daily business. They live their lives in the same location, but offer surprisingly different perspectives. As the camera shifts from their activities to local scenes, the subjects candidly tell their stories: stories of the sea and the forest, of war, love, religion, family, traditions - and of foreign tourists. Tourism on the idyllic white beaches still hasn't fully returned to the levels it reached in the 1980s. The tourists stay away because of the stories about the war - stories that the inhabitants want to shake off, but that the world keeps telling about them. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)