Since Dutch politician, columnist, writer and ‘public gay’ Pim Fortuyn won one third of the votes in the city of Rotterdam in the Dutch local elections early March with his party Leefbaar Rotterdam (Liveable Rotterdam), he is one of the mayor players in the Dutch National elections the 15th of May this year.
The eccentric populist and openly homosexual outsider attempts to seize political power using hard language, causing the current politicians to be tongue-tied, insecure and divided. Preceding the Dutch national elections Correspondent Michael Brissenden, from the Australian public broadcaster ABC, wants to find out how the Dutch are handling the migrant issue after new politician Pim Fortuyn suddenly seems to win most of the votes.
Michael Brissenden portrays and interviews member of parliament for the labour party PvdA and Rotterdam born Peter van Heemst about the disastrous loss of his party at the local elections. With Van Heemst he visits a Rotterdam neighbourhood where Leefbaar Rotterdam won a lot of votes. They meet so called city guards and former Rotterdam alderman for education, youth policy, environment, and public space Els Kuijper to talk about the reasons behind the loss of the labour party. When she was alderman Els Kuijper was the rival and scapegoat of Fortuyn and his local party Leefbaar Rotterdam.
The Australian correspondent also interviews and portrays Ibrahim Spalburg, the director of the Platform Islamic organisations Rotterdam, Job Friso, a political analyst from the Dutch public TV news and he attends a press conference of the new party List Pim Foruyn and does an in depth interview with Pim Foruyn himself.
For this production Featurez gave advice, did the research, set-up, planning and accompanied the filming.