Help me help you

Help me help you is about young people motivated to help in Namibia’s Kalahari Desert, a place that has attracted much outsider help for many decades. Armed with cameras and participatory video training given by an overseas NGO, a group of young Ju/’hoansi become activists. “It’s not good to sit without doing something”. As they are making a film on the roots of educational marginalization, the film they are in weaves together joint challenges and contrasts good intentions with power dynamics.

The youngsters turn the camera on school children. The filmmaker turns the camera on the youngsters. Through a microphone, they are opening up a space to speak across generations and continents in their quest to help. But what does help mean?

Born to Dutch parents, raised on Belgian soil and with Egypt as a home away from home from an early age, Stéphanie grew up in between different, at times clashing lifeworlds. Observing misunderstanding and prejudice in that space, it fueled a calling to act as a bridge between people and build understanding empathically. Since then, she has walked many enriching paths, fulfilling a desire to connect and artistically create meaning. In a recent statement, she has said that "Never in my life have I dreamed about the same people for months on end. I would wake up and see them again, but on my monitor and only in our mutual recent past. From morning until midnight, I would then feel them looking over my shoulder while editing. It was my only way to connect with them and make this film."

Click to watch the project: