Virtual Fatherlands dir: Maartje Nevejan DOCUMENTARY Social Issues ‘Virtual Fatherlands’ is an investigation into the reality and the myth behind the countries that come into being in peoples’ heads. These countries, or rather conceptions of countries, often have very little to do with the real ones, as borders are altered, names changed, populations deported. But the emotional value of the fatherland gets passed on from generation to generation. What are the building blocks of such a fatherland? How do you construct it? It would seem as if the more we are pressured to globalize, to become one, the more we feel the need to be different from those around us. Director Maartje Nevejan follows five people who live in Holland but were born in Estonia, Turkey, Indonesia, Lebanon and the USSR. All of them feel Armenian, even though their roots are in some cases more than six generations back and Armenia has only been an independent republic for the past twelve years. ‘Virtual Fatherlands’ aims to convey a very universal theme: that on the one hand, everyone’s identity is comprised of verifiable reality, and on the other hand by imagination and desires, and neither side is more true than the other. We all invent ourselves, to a greater or lesser extent..