Artists Lonnie van Brummelen and Siebren de Haan collaborated intensely with Surinamese forest people to find out more about their extended political system, in which ancestors, gods and things have a say, too.

Stones Have Laws (Dee Sitonu a Weti) is an immersive initiation into the life of a Maroon community in the former Dutch colony of Suriname. Combining stories of African ancestral traditions and escaped slavery with enacted contemporary rituals, the film explores how the community’s powerful ties to the land have become endangered as industries threaten to devastate the region through deforestation and mining.

The artists Lonnie van Brummelen, Siebren de Haan teamed up with the Surinamese Maroon theatre maker Tolin Alexander to realize the film and closely involved the community in the development of the project. The script was created during an experimental process of collective scripting. The result is a unique cinematic form that bridges new ways of filmmaking, theatre and ancient traditions of story telling.

After premiering at IDFA 2018 in the International Feature Competition, the three co-directors toured with a mobile cinema in the rainforest of Suriname and presented the film to the communities. Stones Have Laws received theatrical release in the UK and Ireland via ICA London. 

From 10 October 2019 it will be distributed in the Netherlands by Windmill Film Distribution.

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