**This event has been postponed.** 

The Molenbeek-Saint-Jean district of Brussels is widely known as a likely jihadi capital. But to six-year-old Aatons and Amine, it’s a familiar home where they listen to spiders, discover black holes, and argue over who will get to steer the flying carpet that will take them to the lands of their ancestors. It’s also a place where, amid a backdrop of suicide bombings and police patrols, they must ponder bigger existential questions about religion and higher power. Aatos wants a god of his own; Amine already has Allah; and their friend Flo thinks that people who believe in God have gone crazy. 

In this child’s-eye documentary, director Reetta Huhtanen follows captures the refreshing clarity with which the kids strip spirituality down to its basic principles and question knowledge itself, while using make-believe to make sense of the senseless. (Finland, 2019)

“The filmmaker has cleverly made a film that puts the magic of childhood in the foreground”—Tue Steen Müller, Filmkommentaren

Reetta Huhtanen is a filmmaker based in Helsinki. She has graduated with a Master of Arts from the ELO Film School Finland in Aalto University majoring in documentary film directing, and also holds a BA in Sociology and Philosophy from the University of Helsinki. 

Her films The Coffee Break, about three eternal students, and Economic Forecasters, an absurdist look into the inscrutable world of economics, have been widely exhibited at international film festivals. Gods of Molenbeek, a Finnish-Belgian-German co-production, is her feature documentary debut.

Kicking off in coordination with International Women’s Day in March, ASF highlights strong new Nordic cinema from female perspectives directed by women in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.

Britt-Marie Was Here /Britt-Marie var här—FRI—MAR 6
Aurora—FRI—MAR 13
That Time of the Year /Den tid på året—FRI—MAR 20
Gods of Molenbeek /Aatos ja amine—FRI—MARCH 27
Transnistra—FRI—APR 3
Agnes Joy—FRI—APR 17
Phoenix /Føniks—FRI—APR 24
Maria’s Paradise /Marian paratiisi—FRI—MAY 1
The Deposit /Tryggð—FRI—MAY 8
The Reformist — A Female Imam /Reformisten—FRI—MAY 15