 |
| Reedland |
Dutch director Sven Bresser's feature début Reedland (Rietland) tells the story of Johan (Gerrit Knobbe), a reed cutter in a rural Dutch village, who discovers the dead body of a young girl on his land. The body, which was left in the reeds, creates an ambiguous horror and, through Bresser's lens, a contradiction — the reeds symbolise the soothing rhythm of nature and provokes our collective fear. Stranger still is the ambiguous guilt Johan experiences, and while taking care of his granddaughter, Dana (Loïs Reinders), he begins his own search for the evil responsible for this heinous crime.
Bresser's earlier shorts include Cavello (2016), about the lead character's attempts to repair a fractured friendship, The Summer and All The Rest (L'été Et Tout Le Reste, 2018), which sees its protagonist stuck in a quiet and lonely Corsica, despite promises to rendezvous with a romantic tryst in Paris, and She Used To Sing Here (2021), which follows a musician searching for his missing sister.
In conversation with Eye For Film, Bresser discussed his filmmaking journey, the necessity of a feeling, and layering his drama with contradictions. He also spoke about nurturing a feeling of confusion and unpredictability, human nature's inherent violence and Reedland's striking audiovisual aesthetic.
Paul Risker: Why filmmaking as a means of creative expression? Was there an inspirational or defining moment for you personally?
Sven Bresser: I don't think I have a defined path. For a long time, I had been searching for a job or a way of expressing myself that would be a part of my life and not just a job. And it took some time before I noticed the possibilities. So, I applied for film school, but I was rejected. I also applied to be a producer when I was younger — I didn't think I would maybe be the one who was going to tell the stories because everybody was saying you had to be this or that to be a storyteller, and that never really appealed to me. And I didn't know if I was the best storyteller.
Some years went by, and I applied to a different kind of art school where they also had a film department. Slowly, I noticed that it was much more than just storytelling; it was about using your imagination and working with images, sounds, tones, and the social process of working together. Of course, it's now very logical to me, but back then, I came to understand it all slowly, and how you can build a collaboration with somebody.
I don't know whether films like Michael Cimino's The Deerhunter (1978) and Gus Van Sant's Elephant (2003) were pivotal moments, but these films, coincidentally or not, dealt with violence and the violent nature of human beings. These were the first films outside the popular mainstream that I watched and came to know, and that was the first time I realised films were made by human beings. The other mainstream films I was watching, I could never think that they were made by people, more like systems or companies.
I saw Elephant when I was a teenager and that same week I saw a weird documentary about Charles Manson, and then City Of God (Cidade De Deus, 2002) — these were at a friend's house. It wasn't that after this experience I knew I wanted to be a filmmaker, and I did everything to get into film school. I wasn't that driven yet, or maybe I was.
PR: So, filmmaking is something that you came around to the idea of gradually.
SB: Yes, slowly, and I don't know if it's the nicest way to say it, but I became aware that I just wasn't good enough in school. So, I knew I would never go to university and do theoretical studies. I just didn't have the concentration for that, and this has been a problem since I was young. So, I tried to do something on my own.
[…] It would be more romantic if I said I really wanted to make films and tell stories, but at first, I was inspired by the idea that you could be autonomous, and as a filmmaker, you can ask, how autonomous are you?
PR: Filmmakers have dramatically compared filmmaking to having a child or going to war. Is there a metaphor you would choose to describe the filmmaking process?
SB: I don't have a hot take, but there are so many different stages. Some, you can, of course, romanticise, and they can have something magical about them. If you surround yourself with the right people, then the routines of the film shoot, like trying to capture something that feels truthful, can become ritualistic, or waiting for the light that's right when the sun goes down. But sometimes, when you look at it afterwards, it doesn't look realistic, despite it looking like there was some truth when you shot it.
I couldn't offer a comparison or say whether it's like war, a ritual or anything else. The film school I attended didn't have a lot of lessons — there were almost none. So, it was a very weird school. But I had the experience of being a director's assistant on Sam de Jong's first feature film, Prince. This really opened my eyes to the fact that filmmaking isn't an intellectual process, but a human and physical one.
Sam worked with non-actors in a very personable way and his non-intellectual way of directing appealed to me. Still being in film school, I was thinking about filmmakers that were intellectual masterminds, and the idea that you had to be great at philosophy. This can still be a great base for a movie, and it can definitely help, but this wall broke down when I saw Sam working together with his cast and crew — it looked more like a kind of social sport.
PR: It doesn't appear that you prioritised coverage during the film shoot, nor is the edit something you rely on. Instead, the camera freely follows the character and sometimes even chooses not to follow the action of the scene. What appeals to you about this type of storytelling?
SB: There are multiple answers to this. But you're talking about the independence of the camera, which could definitely be something here. I think it's about giving the viewer the right amount of independence to experience the film. I don't believe that the viewer should be totally independent, like in virtual reality, because if the viewer is too independent, then cinema loses its power. So, the film still has to be dictatorial, and you have to use the power of the frame, but be generous with this power, and generous in a way that you give the viewer the freedom to watch and experience time.
I went back and forth to the place the film was set for three years, and I even lived in the area for a while and helped with the reed harvest. These experiences can, of course, influence the script, but most of all, I experienced a kind of tone and a rhythm that needed to be in the film. So, the landscape, the people and their way of life dictated the film's rhythm.
PR: The audience can never be free in cinema, because, unlike staged productions, they cannot choose where to look. I'd describe Reedland as offering a reflective or emotional freedom for the audience to enter the film, sit in the space of the characters and think, and pick up on the drama's subtle details.
SB: It takes time to get to know people in an emotional way rather than in an informative way. Getting to know the presence of a man or a village or a landscape takes time. The mise-en-scène and the form are very important in this way. Also, if you don't want to solely inform people, then you need to let them connect with and see somebody, because seeing is an essential part of the medium itself. And you should give the audience the freedom to see somebody for who they are.
PR: The scene where the dead body is discovered among the reeds draws one's eye because the camera moves so slowly that it's like a series of photographs that turns the cinematic camera into a still camera.
SB: A lot of this is about how we use sound and music. Rhythmically, there's this juxtaposition of the wind that lightly rustles the reeds, cutting to the clouds that are almost still, and a body that is completely still. There's the paradox of whether it is still or is it moving? We also do this with the sound, which is near silent
Maybe you can recognise in the way I talk that I think in this formal and rhythmic way when I try to imagine scenes. I do this whether on my own or with my cinematographer. It can sometimes be an intellectual or theoretical conversation, but most of the time it's about finding this rhythm in the composition of the images and the sounds.
PR: Reedland is like putting our hand in a stream and feeling the flow of the water. Only in the cinema, the feeling is sensory. Throughout the film, the rhythm of the cinematography and the editing has such a sensitive presence that we're aware of these rhythms in a noticeably sensory way.
SB: Sitting in a black box surrounded by sound is a sensory experience. And the white light is like an explosion on the screen. It's all part of this physical and sensory experience, and from that formal medium a story or intellectual thoughts can develop. But it starts with this feeling that you're talking about.
PR: As the film unfolds, the dead body becomes a metaphor for the film's political commentary about a kind of death or loss of tradition that is creeping over this rural landscape. Reedland is a crime and mystery story interwoven with a political subtext, that alongside its aesthetic sensibilities, gives the film an indecisive presence.
SB: I always had this feeling of confusion and unpredictability about what kind of film you are watching. In the very first stages of development, I was searching for this feeling. In the first 20 or 30 minutes, you have the feeling you're gonna watch a portrait of a man living off the land for the next 90 minutes. Then, this man suddenly finds the body, and he finds himself in a different narrative, almost what is a different film. And those are the juxtapositions of these different tones — the political, the local, and the global.
There's the question of whether evil is coming from outside or from within? I think it is in the character itself, and it is in the local community, because the villagers point their finger at the rival village without being critically self-aware. It's also on a global level, because their way of living is dying out as a consequence of the global economy and Chinese reed imports. This changes these people and their way of thinking. Even though these feel like different subjects, I see a unity.
PR: Reedland is content to present a question and offer no decisive answer, which echoes the reality that the majority of murders go unsolved. Usually, cinema offers a resolution to violence, but you refrain from doing so. Instead, Reedland is a conversation starter.
SB: I think I would be arrogant or lying even if the film had explanations or answers about the violent nature that it tries to depict. As you say, most murders aren't solved, and if they are and the murderers are caught and locked up, there's still the question of where this kind of violence comes from? In what kind of environment does this violence grow? That is the sole thing that is rarely talked about, and people think a crime is solved when you can project it onto a person and lock them up. But these violent acts go deeper than just individuals acting violently.
PR: Returning to your point about violence coming from within, the way you've constructed the film, it's like an entity that has its own internal darkness. And as humans, our efforts to understand ourselves and our world force us to reckon with the tension between these internal and external forces.
SB: Your reading touches on the feelings and questions that I had when making the film. This entity that you mention, I spoke a lot with my cinematographer about. The way the camera moves towards and through the reeds, we always spoke about this idea of an entity. It shouldn't be mechanical, and it shouldn't be too human. It should have the movement of the camera itself, or the tone of the sound. It should also have the same moral ambiguity that we are trying to explore in the film.
One of the very first images that I had when I was walking around this area researching the film was a man working on the reeds, who stops and looks over his shoulder. His way of looking like a predator or prey, and with all of these different tones in this one way of looking, dictated the whole tone of the movie, which relates to what you were saying.
PR: To borrow a quote from Sir Winston Churchill, the end of the story feels more like "the end of the beginning." One might argue that we seek to understand the film intellectually, but there's also an instinctive understanding of what it means in the pit of our stomach. You leave it to the audience to answer the film's more troubling questions for themselves.
SB: Yes, and that's why I noticed that the film might not land immediately for people. I want to encourage journalists before they write something, to take a moment, maybe a night of rest, maybe even a week, because I think it takes some time to digest. It's a very clear film and, at the same time, it's a film with a lot of confusion. And this paradox is something that I was always looking for, and it relates to the film's ending that you're talking about.
I don't know exactly what the ending is, but there's a feeling of the contamination of the landscape, of the body and soul, and of Johan himself. What he has experienced has marked him forever and that's the only way I can explain it.
Reedland premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival as part of Critics' Week.
