This Is Your Captain Speaking

10-year old Asara has lived with his adoptive parents in the Netherlands for a long time. He was born in Ghana, just like his music teacher Seydou whom he has a special bond with. Seydou is in the country illegally and threatens to be deported. Asara wants to prevent that by adopting him, but this requires money. He manages to get plenty of funds thanks to his friends a bright idea. Unfortunately, he then runs into the enormous adoption bureaucracy in the Netherlands.

This magical-realist film shows the complicated issue of the Dutch Aliens’ Act from Asara’s perspective. He wonders why people who weren’t born in the country don’t have the right to live there. For director Idriss Nabil who is half Cameroon and half Dutch it was this unjust, discriminatory system that occasioned the making of this film.