Lonnie van Brummelen, Siebren de Haan & Tolin Erwin Alexander | 2025 | The Netherlands, Suriname | 103’ | digital | Sranantongo, Kalina, Wayana, Ndyuka, Pamaka & Aluku spoken, English subtitles 

The interior of Suriname is home to Maroons, descendants of Africans who freed themselves from Dutch slavery and formed a series of clans with unique languages, customs and rituals. Boogie, a Fiiman (“free man”) from such a clan, plies his motorised pirogue up and down the Maroni River and its tributaries, bringing vital supplies to villages in the forest. Along the way he encounters Maroon and Indigenous communities who, through stories, songs and dramatisations, evoke an existence threatened by industrial gold mining, climate change and other perils.  

Boogie, knowing of his complicity in this state of affairs, heads finally to his own village, having been summoned by the clan’s elders. And he knows the role that history plays here too: “Colonial legacy turned out to be an iron cloth.”