In Face Value, Dutch filmmaker and photographer Johan van der Keuken composes a sprawling cinematic essay across thirteen European cities, using the human face as both metaphor and material. Filmed during the transformative period around the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of the European Union, the work captures a continent in flux. Through intimate encounters, voiceovers, and cityscapes, van der Keuken seeks not a unified portrait of Europe, but a fragmented and affective collage of lives and identities.

The faces in the film belong to artists, refugees, workers, lovers, and strangers. Some are interviewed, others simply observed. This layering of presence and absence underscores the theme of legibility. Who is seen, who is recognised, and who remains invisible? The film resists narrative closure, opting instead for a structure guided by intuition and movement. As in much of van der Keuken’s work, form and politics are inseparable: the essay film becomes a space to think through the aesthetics of solidarity, diversity, and encounter at a time when new borders, both literal and symbolic, were being drawn.