Skin

A working-class neighbourhood in the Netherlands at the end of the seventies. Frankie is a teenager and the son of a man who survived the Holocaust. When his mother is taken to hospital gravely ill, the distance between him and his father widens further. With nothing left to hold on to at home, the local skinhead group starts taking an interest in him. Hanro Smitsman's film is based on a true story, and that is exactly what makes it uncomfortable. The telling neither excuses Frankie nor declares him a monster from the start; it shows step by step what void radicalisation fills. The bitter irony is plain: the son of a Holocaust survivor moves towards the idea that would have destroyed him. No symbol and no slogan is made attractive. Robert de Hoog plays Frankie.