“Fantastique” is a magical realist documentary that follows 14-year-old contortionist Fanta in Conakry, Guinea. She juggles caring for her ailing mother, going to school, and training as one of the only girls in an acrobatic group. She hopes to join their next big tour. As she tries to meet all these expectations, Fanta begins to doubt what she really wants.

Director: Marjolijn Prins

Marjolijn Prins (born 1987 in the Netherlands) is a documentary filmmaker with an arts background. During her fine arts studies, she researched the possibility of directing her life as a fiction film. She attempted to travel from France to the Netherlands on a camel, but not a single step of the journey went according to plan. It was when she embraced the beauty of failure and the unexpected that her love for documentaries was born. She graduated cum laude with a master’s degree from the RITCS in Brussels in 2016. Her graduation film “Mum, Me and the House” (Marjolijn Prins, 2016) won several awards, including the Jury Award at the London International Documentary Festival, which qualifies for the Oscars. She co-directed two seasons of the web series “Hairy Heroes” (2020/2021) and the short documentary “Paper Borders” (2022) with a group of young refugees in Brussels.