Tanja - Dagboek van een guerrillera
Documentary about Tanja Nijmeier, a Dutch student who joined the guerrilla movement FARC, and later became a key figure in the Colombian peace process.
What drives a young Dutch woman to join a violent revolutionary struggle thousands of kilometres from home? And who is Tanja Nijmeier really: a naïve girl, a terrorist, or an idealistic freedom fighter? These are the central questions in the documentary TANJA – DAGBOEK VAN EEN GUERRILLERA.
After completion of her studies, Nijmeier leaves for Colombia to teach. Once in Colombia, she joins the FARC movement and quickly manages to become one of the faces of the organisation. Her diaries, discovered by Colombian government troops in 2007, suggest she felt miserable about her life in the jungle, but in later interviews she is combative and shows no remorse. Yet she decides to turn her back on the FARC movement in 2020.
Director Marcel Mettelsiefen – himself half-German and half-Ecuadorian – covered the peace talks between FARC and the Colombian government for the German weekly Der Spiegel about a decade ago. That’s how he met Nijmeier. He slowly managed to win her trust and persuade her to participate in this documentary. Nijmeier still lives in Colombia and continues to be on the Interpol list of wanted people.