Moederland is a hybrid documentary about memory, displacement and the enduring bond between a Syrian musician and his mother. Together with filmmaker Jikke Lesterhuis, Sam builds a growing miniature landscape from fragments of his past: the swamp where he used to play with his friends, his mother’s kitchen, his first music instrument. As memories shift, so does the landscape. Through music and phone calls with his mother, places disappear, return or take on new forms. Somewhere between Syria and the Netherlands, memory and imagination, they build a place where mother and son can be together again.
Jikke Lesterhuis (1997) is a filmmaker and artist whose work moves between film and visual art. Her practice is characterised by handmade miniature sets, puppetry and tactile materials. Rather than recreating reality, Lesterhuis builds fragile, constructed worlds in which the boundaries between reality and imagination begin to shift. The act of making itself often remains visible: materials, textures and traces of construction become part of the image.