Saskia Vredeveld was born in Cape Town, South Africa. Having grown up during Apartheid, she has experienced what it is like to live in a segregated society where communities are destroyed by racism. She studied Film and Photography in London and the Netherlands but the country where she was born continues to startle and amaze her. In a sense, her films about South Africa are a means to deepen her understanding of her home country and its complicated social fabric. Three of these films are screened at this year’s edition of Beeld voor Beeld: My Beloved Country (1992), which penetrates the heart of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement on the eve of the turnover, Across the Border (1999), about South Africa’s dirty war at the borders with Namibia and Angola, and her latest film Black Diamonds, a portrait of the new black middle class, which premieres at this festival. Most of her films are broadcast on Dutch television (VPRO, Ikon, NPS, Humanistische Omroep), including No More Heroes (2007), a portrait of photographer Kees Tabak. She also made an experimental documentary about the human psyche in cooperation with photographer Roger Ballen (Memento Mori, 2005), which was screened not only at the Dutch Film Festival but also in museums in the Netherlands, New York, France, South Africa and Canada. She is an adviser for the Dutch Film Fund as well as a jury member for the Dutch Film Festival in Utrecht and teaches as a guest lecturer at institutions such as the Rietveld Academy and the Dutch Film and Television Academy.