Theo Maassen
When her mother abandons her dementing father, Alex unexpectedly finds herself at a crossroads. As she moves back in the parental house to look after her father, she starts questioning her own life. Does she want to stay with her adulterous husband? She tolerated his affairs for years, but is she really happy with him? Or should she, like her parents, drop the facade?
Johan has been locked up – wrongly in his opinion – for the murder of his father and little sister. His mother is the only one who can prove his innocence, but he hasn’t been able to contact her for years. When he is transferred within the psychiatric prison to the long-stay department, it’s the last straw. He decides to escape and to go looking for his mother.
Doodslag (Dutch for “Manslaughter”) is the story of Max, a paramedic who is repeatedly hindered in performing his duties by loutish behaviour. As his ambulance hurries towards a complicated childbirth, some youths prevent Max from reaching the distressed woman in labour. Spurred on by the emergency and the incendiary words of a TV pundit, he reaches a boiling point and forcefully hits one of the men obstructing his ambulance. Max’s strike has far-reaching, unintended consequences.