That’s Life (2007)

Directed by: Sander Veeneman | 60 minutes | documentary

‘That’s Life’ is a penetrating portrait of three young people who were portrayed as children by Sander Veeneman thirteen years ago. At the time, the girl Liza was in a refugee camp in Eritrea. She had fled Mozambique. At first no one knows where she has gone. A man tells “go south and then right, maybe she’s there.” The South African boy who wants to become a boxer has now become a young man. He has come to know life from a less attractive side in recent years. When he sees his photo from then, he sighs: “Ah, I was a very cheerful and happy child then.” The Indian from Peru is now in bad conditions. Nevertheless, he still happily skips through the jungle and says that he doesn’t want so many children when he grows up. “About eight, that’s enough.” But the diseases that prevail there offer little hope for a healthy future.

Veeneman does not make a dramatic story out of it. Political and economic causes play no role in his film. At least, no more than the protagonist himself sketches of the world in which he/she lives. When the Mozambican woman also speaks, you become very gloomy. How bleak is it to be in your early twenties and expect to be dead in ten years? And that’s because everyday life is just too hard.

Veeneman feels a connection with these people, but would like to emphasize that he is not a development worker. As a photographer and filmmaker, however, he goes much further than this. With his organization First8, he makes a visual protest against hunger and poverty. This documentary is a great example of that. The intensity of the circumstances of these three young adults enters your mind. Subtly but purposefully you feel the poverty and hopelessness of their existence. Even without the figures of the large numbers of refugees, you experience desolation and loneliness. The effort it takes to rebuild a life. The comment that as a black person you can now also go to school if you have money for it, cuts through your soul. And you know, unfortunately that’s still their life.
Veeneman participates with ‘That’s Life’ in the Debut Competition at the Dutch Film Festival 2008.