Reedland

Reeds are one of the oldest of human crops, cultivated, harvested and used to make mats and baskets for thousands of years. In the Netherlands today, in the marshy ground of the IJsselmeer, they are an important means of water management, forming a sort of natural borderland. It’s an appropriately uncanny place. Amongst the tall stems, one could be standing right next to somebody and not know it. Time seems to slow down there. In the Autumn, ageing reed cutter Johan (Gerrit Knobbe) works 11 hour shifts, from dawn until early evening, scything, gathering, sorting, drying, stacking the reeds andthen burning the leftovers. He carries burning matter between the pyres with care, weaving a course which at first seems inefficient, but which leaves him with ways out that don’t lead directly through the smoke. It billows up in white plumes; one can almost smell it in the twilit air.

Johan leads a quiet life. His wife has died but he enjoys time with his daughter and granddaughter and their beautiful white horse, Grise, whom he brushes and leads out to pasture in the mornings. It’s a peaceful existence, or at least it seems that way, until the day when he finds a local girl lying dead among the reeds, partially stripped. One shoe and sock have come off, and lie beside her naked foot, which is moist with dew is if she were a creature of the water caught when crawling out onto the land.

The girl’s death, and the subsequent arrest of a ‘Trooter’ – a youth from the village on the other side of the river – bring out local anger. Economic pressures have already exacerbated rivalry between the two settlements. Johan is appalled to learn that he can only expect to get €2.90 for his bundles of reeds instead of the usual €3.60. The decreased price stems from a change in the Chinese market, and he could manage if he improved his efficiency by getting a mechanical reed cutting machine, but doing so would destroy the land – short term gain for long term loss, and trouble for all the land without reeds there to hold the water in check. On the other side of the river, they have made the change, and their greater success has inspired them to turn their eyes to the uncut reeds on Johan’s patch.

Dana, Johan’s granddaughter, flicks through TV channels when she’s bored. A newsreader talks about refugees trying to find sanctuary in Europe. Similar pressures are felt everywhere. Dana is putting on a play at school, getting heavily involved on the scripting level. She wants her grandfather to help her make hippopotamus costumes. This was once hippo country. Change is a constant. Her talent sometimes makes her seem mature beyond her years, but there are ways in which she is fragile. When Johan starts to investigate matters around the murder, at first just out of curiosity, a campaign of intimidation against him begins, and he struggles to shelter her from its effects.

Writer/director Sven Bresser lets events unfold slowly and makes great use of silence, often leaving viewers to wrestle with complex emotions and figure things out for themselves, rather than providing an interpretation in music or dialogue. in spite of his age, this is Knobbe’s first feature, and yet he carries these quiet stretches well, communicating with his body, with his eyes. When the natural world gives way to the mechanical – a home appliance malfunctioning, one vehicle driving too close to another – it rips us out of that thoughtful space as surely as a slap across the face.

The Netherlands’ official submission to the 2026 Oscars, Reedland is a thoughtful, mature piece of cinema which treats its central incident with due respect yet interprets interpersonal violence as both symptom and cause of much larger, more overwhelming crises. The girl seems like a herald from a still more troubled future. Can the lessons of a lifetime amongst the reads help people like Johan to preserve something of what matters?

Reviewed on: 12 Dec 2025