Michael Leendertse was a teenager when the Boeing of the Israeli company El Alcrashed into the Groeneveen and Klein-Kruitberg flats in the Bijlmermeer onOctober 4, 1992. At least 43 people died, but the lives of many hundreds ofresidents and aid workers changed that night. They suffered from mysteriousphysical complaints: chronic respiratory infections, pains, impotence, stomachand intestinal complaints.
Residents and media continued to search for years for the answer to what theexact payload of the disaster flight was. Even a parliamentary inquiry did notbring the answers victims hoped for. “Certain elements are etched in thememory of my generation,” says Leendertse. “The burning flats, the desperatepeople. And all the questions about the ‘men in white suits’ and the missingblack box.”
Bloodcurdling thriller
At the Film Academy he read a reconstruction de Volkskrant. Since then, theplan has settled in his head to make a series about this black page in recentDutch history. He contacted Fidelity -journalist Vincent Dekker, who foryears tried to get the bottom stone out. “The story had everything for ablood-curdling thriller, from conspiracy theories to great human suffering. Iwas very surprised that no other creator had come up with the idea of aseries before.”
Also read a background article about how the Bijlmer is portrayed in films andseries: With the camera on safari in the Bijlmermeer
Leendertse chose Dekker and his Volkskrant colleague Pierre Heijboer as maincharacters. “You want to take the viewer into amazement at everything theydiscover,” explains the writer. “The core of the story is what happened afterthe disaster. A government that may have covered things up, but at the veryleast remains stuck in numbers, statistics and rules.”
He spoke with countless relatives and victims and decided to bundle theirstories into one character: Asha Willems, a resident of the Bijlmer who losesher fiancé in the disaster. “I’ve put all kinds of heartbreaking stories I’veheard from relatives in her” Asha is played by actress Joy Delima, who wasinvolved in the project from an early stage. Delima was given all the space todevelop her character herself. “As a writer you can only empathize to acertain extent in a certain world”, Delima thinks. “Of course someone canimmerse themselves in a multicultural community such as the Bijlmer. But itthen threatens to quickly run into caricatures: with a Surinamese family,there is always roti on the table in films.”
She grew up in Rotterdam; her father is from Curaçao, her mother fromSuriname. “It’s the little nuances that make the difference. That we alwaystell you to people who are older. Or how you approach people in times ofmourning.” The actors in the series have the same background as theircharacters as much as possible. Victims from the Ghanaian community are playedby people with Ghanaian roots. They were given the space to fill in detailsthemselves in ‘their’ scenes.
class difference
The core of the story is not the disaster on October 4 itself, but especiallythe aftermath, Delima thinks. “A lot of frustration among residents came fromthe fact that they felt completely unheard in the years after the crash,” shesays. “I hope it never happens, but if a plane had crashed into the canalbelt, the reactions of politicians and government would have been different.”This has not only to do with the skin color of most of the victims, emphasizesthe protagonist. “The Bijlmer disaster was more about class difference. Theseries shows very clearly that there were also many white people among thevictims.”
The makers hope that the series also contributes to ensuring that the accidentis not forgotten. “I’m 28, so I was born after the plane crashed,” saysDelima. “I never heard anything about it in history class.”
Scriptwriter Leendertse also hopes that policy makers and politicians mightlook and realize how little has changed in three decades. “Look at the bigfiles that now dominate the media: the allowance affair, gas extraction inGroningen, the energy crisis. All situations in which the government viewscitizens as statistics. And the politicians are partly the same as in the late