Kees van der Spek said that it felt ‘not a choice’ to let the colleagues of without a trace in his program Scammers Tackled (RTL5) under a magnifying glass. Yet that is what had to be done. At the hands of a Colombian fixer, at without a trace namely, mismatches between adoptees and their families occurred. Big news. Jinek got the scoop on Monday evening, and the KRO-NCRV announced an investigation into the 16 cases involving the fixer.
The crime journalist had a hit with a season opener of Scammers Tackled but more about what that looked like later, because in the 2Doc documentary Walk the Land such a fascinating search for identity also took place. In this case the identity of the landscape of the Yorkshire Dales in northern England so beloved by Brits. ‘Whose country does that actually belong to?’, the makers wonder.
That question arises very slowly, about halfway through the film, after the makers have first talked to all kinds of walkers about their love for the area and the typically British hobbies train travel and walking. Twenty years earlier, the makers crossed the area before the film, on foot and by train Loving Memory. They want to investigate whether the people they spoke to at the time and the landscape still exist. During that quest, the makers gradually discover that they have to adjust their image of the typical English landscape and the British who live there.
Walk the Land is a groping film that shows the changed perspective of the makers, subtly exposing the painful history of a region. In passing, the documentary shows how you can relate to your own work in a sincere way as a filmmaker.
A little less subtly, the Van der Spek episode has been pre-cooked in recent days. Bee Jinek so the news about the mismatches that the NOS News was picked up and then by all the newspapers, news that, according to Khalid, turned the adoption world ‘upside down’ on Tuesday evening. That was not the case, however, as it turned out in the broadcast. There were hardly any concerned people who had reported to one of the two foundations that were sitting at the table.
Who despite all the spoilers in the media still for the episode of Scammers Tackled sat down, at least was treated to a real without a tracemoment (already given away at Jinek ). One of the two victims, who now has his own search agency, had found a woman in Colombia who she thought might be the real mother of the other victim. The man and his suspected biological mother underwent a DNA test. The results were announced at a dinner party. Tears, hugs, a beaming Van der Spek. Had anything good come out of all that misery?