What do the wind-stirred reeds hide? What do people keep concealed behind their facades?
Dutch writer-director Sven Bresser’s debut feature Reedland (Rietland), shown at the 74th International Film Festival Mannheim-Heidelberg, received the FIPRESCI Award in the On the Rise program for early-career filmmakers. Among numerous strong entries—many rooted in personal memory, shaped by female perspectives, or engaged in social, political, and historical re-imaginings—the FIPRESCI Jury recognised a film distinguished by its metaphysical vision.
Reedland is not only a hypnotically eerie exploration of the reed expanses of the northern Netherlands—a rarely depicted landscape that harbors wind-haunted enigmas—but also a study of its taciturn protagonist Johan (Gerrit Knobbe), offering a detailed inquiry into the human psyche. Johan, a widowed reed cutter in his sixties, lives alone on the outskirts of a village. His life is modest and grounded: harvesting reeds for thatching, preparing them for sale, burning the remnants. He is not outspoken, even with his pre-teen granddaughter Dana (Loïs Reinders), whom he cares for after school, his words are few. Nothing dramatic marks the first fifteen minutes: we watch him work silently in the fields—transfixing images captured in the fading light—eat his solitary dinner and put his granddaughter to bed.
Then, a sudden shift: silhouettes of trees thrash under violent winds. This lingering nocturnal scene, with restless treetops against the dark, unsettles. Something is amiss, though nothing in Johan’s simple routine suggests what. At dawn, Johan halts while walking through the reeds: he has found the partly naked body of a girl, presumably raped. Police arrive; villagers are shaken. Though this is the inciting event, the film is not concerned with identifying the perpetrator. Reedland instead works as an inquiry into human intention, its true focus resting on the impact the discovery has on Johan.
Confronted with the murdered girl, something dormant and dark stirs within him, something lurking behind his steady, expressionless face. Later that day, he pauses in the field, listening to and watching the wind-driven, ever-rustling reeds. The images of the reed fields are exquisite: both poetic and unsettling. Something seems to stir behind those dense clusters—mysterious, perhaps ominous—mirroring the impossibility of knowing of the human soul, his own included.
In the evening, after telling Dana a bedtime story, he goes online to compare prices for new machinery: hand-cutting reed, though gentler on the soil, is no longer viable. During this search, he stumbles upon an AI sex bot and, momentarily drawn, masturbates. Later, his gaze lingers on Aleida (Anna Loefen), a teenage girl who plays with Dana and sings at town hall events. The tension crescendos when Johan gives her a lift during a torrential downpour: confined together in the car, the silence between them is strained, and the pounding rain intensifies the unease. No words are exchanged, yet the impropriety—and the possibility—of his attraction is palpable. To him, it feels like a curse: the burden of carrying the seed of transgression within.
The murder has marred him in ways he cannot name, hinting at a latent pull toward base instincts—not from intent, but from the mere condition of being male. The film suggests that a capability for gendered violence lies deep within Johan, a burden he cannot shake. He discovers a patch of black tar seeping from his field, and it stains his hands and sleeves. Later, when he tries to wash his tar-stained shirt, the machine convulses and breaks: inside, he finds a hardened, stone-like lump of tar. He flings it into a pond, but immediately retrieves it, unable to discard what has become part of him.
Yet none of this diminishes his genuine concern about the case: Johan conducts his own inquiry, fixating on a suspect and allowing their unspoken hostility to escalate. Gerrit Knobbe, a real-life reed cutter with no acting experience, brings an unforced authenticity to the screen; his weathered hands attest to labor shaped by landscape, his seemingly grounded presence concealing unexpected complexity.
Bresser’s script is confident: it nods to globalization and the precariousness of rural life yet excels most in its exploration of the human interior. It gestures rather than explicates, sustaining a sense of mystery even as the story moves forward. Cinematographer Sam du Pon elevates the film visually: the uncanny motion of yellow reeds swept by wind resembles a mirage. The film’s metaphors—the reeds, the tar, the trees, the rain—carry a Tarkovskian resonance: hypnotic, poetic, metaphysical. They become characters in their own right, enveloping the screen in the mystery of the land and the human psyche. The sound design deepens this atmosphere—haunting, foreboding, and truly unforgettable. Though rooted in a specific place, the film’s central tension is universal: the troubling nature of humankind, the deeper forces that shape our existence.
In the end, Reedland stands as a formidable work, reminding us that the most unsettling landscapes are often the ones we carry within—and it signals the emergence of a European filmmaker whose future projects warrant close attention.
Assiya Issemberdiyeva
©FIPRESCI 2025