“Reedland” Review: A violent crime rocks a rural Dutch community | Reviews

Dir/SCR: Sven Bresser. Netherlands/Belgium. 2025. 111 minutes

When the Dutch Reed Cutter Johan (Gerrit Knobbe) discovers the body of a young girl in his country, he lets the perpetrator of violent offense discover the increasingly dark path. For his debut, the Dutch filmmaker Sven Bresser returned to the landscape in which he grew up, and contrasts the country, his sluggish pace and unchanged traditions, with topics of intolerance, suspicion and guilt.

A convincing feeling of premonition

Bressers Corsica Set 2018 Short Summer and all the rest played Venice and Toronto in 2018 and he is now coming with Cannes Critics' week Reedland; Remarkable as the first Dutch function that has been a premiere since then The Polish bride 1998. It has a participation in newcomers Knobbe, a professional reed cutter, and his confident visual style could also help win over further festivals and distributors who are looking for different international voices.

Filmed in Wenerribben-Wieiden, in the northern Netherlands, Reedland Opens with a hypnotic extended wind that rustles through an expansive sea of ​​golden reeds. This will be a repeated visual motive that takes on an increasingly depressing tone, while Johan goes down his psychological rabbit hole. However, Johan is not a gung-Ho-vigilante; The crime has kept the foundations of his simple life in which he harvested, after the death of his wife, kept a modest home and takes care of his beloved granddaughter Dana (Lois Rebers). His discovery of the semi -naked body of a local girl is a trauma that switches both into the apparently gratifying community and in itself and forces Johan to confront some of his own difficult feelings and wishes.

As Johan, Knobbe has tacit behavior that refutes the emotions under his bold surface. He bears the same stoic expression whether he eats his meat and his potatoes, die internet porn or appears as a hippo next to Dana in local breeze. Occasional emotions speak for the love he has for Dana, and the anger he feels against the unknown perpetrator of this murder. Like the others of his generation, he feels a responsibility to preserve this landscape from malicious forces – not only the murderer, but also the ruthless government agencies who are determined to transform the reedland into a more lucrative good, far -off Chinese, the prices for ever recent and closer to the apartment, agriculture about the river, which can be reduced through, refer to the prices.

This is a proud, defiant, islandy community, but one in a precarious balance and together with Bresser's reserved script, Sam du Pon, obviously contrasting the breathtaking views with darker pictures. Fragmented close -ups of the dead girl, slaughtering a sick cow. At joint events – the funeral of the dead girl, a town hall meeting, the local trade fair – the camera linger on the kind faces of the men present, young and old and, like Johan, tries to find out who has the ability to be a violent murderer.

There is also a noticeable feeling that a little less physically works in these countries, an old evil that hides in the reed buildings, moving from burning reed bales in the fascinating Twilight smoke, takes strength from the constantly changing weather. Johan is apparently in harmony with this marauding force – or may be in contact with something that is buried deeply. Bresser deliberately keeps things in ambiguous, but while the film never completely turns into horror, the self -confident use of genre elements, including increased natural sound design of kwints van Laethem, gives a convincing feeling of premonition.