Aidan Timmer
AboutFILMS
OTHER WORKS
Tarik en ik
(2024) - Hybrid/Documentary22 minutes
In this essayistic documentary I try to reconstruct a hijacking from 2015 by analyzing data, using 3d modeling and found footage to rebuild the location of the event and doing auditions for a staged reenactment.
Looking back on the footage of a hijacking at the Dutch national news broadcast, back in 2015. Aidan Timmer, who now shares the age of the culprit, reflects on the incident. While watching the young man struggle to recite a letter on live television, Aidan gets emotionally closer to the boy who took his father hostage.
A young man of twenty entered the Dutch television building with what appeared to be a loaded gun.
I was at home watching a freeze-frame on television with my grandparents. My mother called to tell us that everybody had been evacuated, except for a small group, in case the broadcast needed to be aired; my father was one of these people.
A young man of twenty entered the Dutch television building with what appeared to be a loaded gun.
I was at home watching a freeze-frame on television with my grandparents. My mother called to tell us that everybody had been evacuated, except for a small group, in case the broadcast needed to be aired; my father was one of these people.
"Please wait, due to circumstances, there is no news broadcast at the moment." The pixels of the white letters burned into my eyes. Tarik Z (the prosecutor) had written a letter in which he intended to warn everyone about the future, a letter he wanted to read on live television to "wake everyone up." In the end, he never got the chance to read the letter; he was disarmed and forced to the ground by five policemen.
Now, ten years later, I watch the footage captured on a cell phone by one of the Dutch broadcasting employees. I recognize my father among the people running, despite the poor video quality—he looks scared. I am now twenty myself, and when I look at the boy with the gun, I see a stressed young man who doesn’t seem confused, just tense. The Tarik on my screen and I, watching him, are the same age. I wonder what the 20-year-old Tarik would think today; I wish I could ask him.
Would he still storm the building? What is he really doing there? Why do I recognize myself in him?
Link:
https://vimeo.com/1018436803?share=copy