PLEASE HOLD THE LINE

A Dominican family runs a teleservice shop and adjoining hairdresser's salon in the Amsterdam Nieuwmarkt quarter. Their customers come from all over the world and have settled in the Netherlands for various reasons. They come to the shop to call distant friends and relatives, whom they often have not seen for a long time. According to the proprietress, "Most people that enter my shop are sad when they come in and happy when they leave, but some people are even sadder when they leave." The film compiles a number of stories of people who regularly make phone calls from the shop. Like Pari, who came from Iran with her son sixteen years ago and is now calling her father and mother. Or Tina, who is discussing her relationship at length, and Adnan, who uses the phone to still try and exert some influence on the management of the family estate back in Turkey. To all of them, the telephone is the most important means of communication to keep in touch with a world they have left behind for political or financial reasons.