In 2018, a van carrying fleeing people is shot at by police in Belgium without warning. Two-year-old Mawda Shawri is hit and dies. At the scene, the police instead tell the emergency workers that the people had thrown the girl out of the car. A few years later, Robin Vanbesien and activists in Brussels organise a gathering, to give themselves and Mawda a voice. Using previously conducted interviews as voice-overs to accompany the images, they create a space of collective remembrance where there is room for feelings such as grief and anger, while also articulating political demands and a counter-narrative to the state’s lies and efforts to criminalise the victims. Cinema as remembrance work and act of solidarity that continues to resonate long after viewing due to its courageous approach, but also thanks to its extraordinary poetry and visual beauty.

As a visual artist and filmmaker, Robin Vanbesien explores modes of embodied knowledge and collective imagination engaged in social and political struggles. Through the notion of “ciné place-making”, he acknowledges the capacity of cinema to preserve, reclaim and redistribute invisibilized memories, histories and lived cultures, using a cinematic language that probes beyond the prevalent scenes of representation. He collaborates with situated emancipatory grassroots movements, exploring cinema as a space for social gathering and political engagement. In 2020, he co-founded “The Post Film Collective”, which explores cinema as a form of speculative rehearsal and communal assembly.

Filmography (selection): 2017 UNDER THESE WORDS (SOLIDARITY ATHENS 2016), 2024 HOLD ON TO HER