Melissa Knollenburg - Pretty Girls in Bijlmer Parktheater

After the death of her great love, Bobby is confronted by an unknown Moluccan boy with her partner's hidden life. What begins as grief grows into an intense search and the question: can you keep loving someone who turns out to be a stranger to you?

Pretty Girls is a performance about loss and shame, but also about resilience and the courage to hold on to love when the truth is abrasive. A thriller at the intersection of personal tragedy, injustice against women, and a colonial legacy that still shapes lives generations later.

Written and directed by Melissa Knollenburg, who—after Kantjil en de Tijger, TROOST and Jam Karet—supported by investigative journalist Griselda Molemans (Follow the Money), turns her gaze to the history of women that has been swept under the rug.

“Creating a performance about love in the context of our colonial history is an absurd process. Almost no one knows about the enormous debts that Indische families ended up in, or how many women were forced to work as comfort women. Time and again, I come across facts that baffle me.” - Melissa Knollenburg