Courtrooms are in pursuit of truth. Judges look suspects in the eyes, citizens stand face to face with the state. These aren’t cases that attract slick lawyers, TV cameras or crowded public galleries. On the contrary, they lack any trace of glamour. Yet it is here that life itself files past every day. Shame, regret, denial, bravado, routine, ambition. The courtroom offers a revealing glance into the lives of ordinary people. Stories about human shortcomings, about men and women who have lost their way, had a stroke of bad luck, or seem incorrigible. In the documentary The Trials director Jaap van Hoewijk shows the nature of the proceedings at the magistrate’s. The Trials is a collection of touching, comical and sometimes painful confrontations between citizens and the judge..
Director
Jaap van Hoewijk
Jaap van Hoewijk (Rotterdam 1963) has been making documentaries since 1995. His debut film was Procedure 769, about the witnesses of the first execution of 25 years in California. In 2001 he made Family Secret , Jaap finds out his father didn’t die in an accident, but commited suicide. In 2012 he made Kill Your Darling a feature documentary about the police investigation into the murder of photo model Melissa Halstead, whose headless and handless body was found in a canal in Rotterdam in 1990. Zijn film, Killing Time, was selected for many festivals, among which IDFA and DOKLeipzig. In 2015 he made the 2part documentary The Trials a collection of touching, comical and sometimes painful confrontations between citizens and the judge.