I watched Sven Bresser’s first feature, Reedland (Rietland) (reviewed here), at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was screened in the Semaine de la Critique section. Afterwards, I had the opportunity to interview the director.

Is the film shot in the area where you grew up? What would you say is the most beautiful thing about Reedlands? And what is the scariest?

Sven Bresser: First of all, where we shot the film is not where I grew up. I grew up in a small village that used to be surrounded by reedlands. Commercially, the reed harvest died there in the early 2000s. The landscape changed because if the reed is not cut, the trees will take over. The golden yellow reeds, the dried reeds, no longer exist in my hometown, but they’re deeply ingrained in my memory. I was looking for a landscape that is so present in my memory, and I found it in the northern part of Holland. It is one of the last areas in the country where people live off the reeds.

One of the most striking memories is what happens after a wet night. The morning after, when the sun shines really hard, the reed makes a weird sound, like a whispering sound, we call it. These kinds of formal considerations were in mind when I made this film.

Sven Bresser about the landscape

In this beautiful landscape, you introduce violence and evil. How did you come up with this idea? What did you want to explore in this specific landscape?

SB: I never start with theoretical or philosophical ideas. It’s always the images, tones, and sounds that attract me. When I began thinking about this film, I learned more about the work of Armando, a renowned post-war Dutch artist. He grew up during World War II in Holland, and he had this poetic notion of a guilty landscape and nature’s indifference to human suffering.

The Disapproving Swede: Regarding the landscape, it’s a very visual thing, very beautiful. But for me, it feels like the invisible is almost as important as the visible in a way.

SB: Definitely, yeah. That is the tension we aim to explore throughout the movie. I think it’s an essence of cinema as well. You put a camera somewhere, you make something visible, but you also capture something invisible. You do it with sound; you do it with other things. I’m always looking for this balance between what’s hidden and what’s visible. A big part of the story is about the fear of the unknown, the things that you cannot see.

TDS: Like the enemies on the other side. You never see them.

SB: Yes, the villagers across the lake or the Chinese reed cutters, their colleagues, but they’re living on the other side of the world. They become the enemy due to the global economic system in which they live.

The main character is searching for evil and may even discover it within himself. But it’s almost like this landscape or this place has an ancient evil. Is that something that you can relate to?

SB: Definitely. It also touches on this notion of a guilty landscape. I also see it in the songs of Robert Johnson, the blues artist. He talks about evil, an evil spirit that knocks on your door. It can be a neighbour; it can be in the ground; you can walk hand in hand with it. I don’t have a theory about it, but in a way, I think this man, who is confronted by evil through this violent act that happens in the landscape, has his life contaminated by it.

TDS: I will continue with the visuals and discuss the framing, not only the framing of the image but also the occasional use of frames within frames. You see the main character through house windows or the
car window. Is it that he’s being trapped, or is it just a visual thing? Is it thematic, stylistic, or both?

SB: For me, it’s not thematic at all, but it can be for the spectator who projects things. I never have these thematic theories about it. But yeah, there’s a strange pleasure in filming frames. It connects you to cinema in a very simple way. I like the films of Abbas Kiarostami, who often films a long shot through a car window, showing people approaching and those going away. I think it can be very generous to use the frame that way.

TDS: I was thinking about how we perceive this character’s life and his daily routine; it’s very mundane, but the way those scenes are shot, those mundane tasks become almost a ritual. It made me think about Béla Tarr’s last film [A Torinói ló], where the father and daughter eat potatoes every day.

SB: Béla Tarr was not a direct reference, but he’s very good at filming something very simple and making it complex.

TDS: How about the ritual aspect?

SB: There is a weird pleasure in filming these rituals. They’ve been repeated for generations, and if you take the time to witness them, they slowly develop their own inner luck and inner logic in front of you. They don’t need narrative explanations or intellectual plotting or anything. They are independent of the rules of narrative cinema. They have a power within themselves, and they remain with you in some way. I think cinema is a
magical tool in capturing these things.

TDS: The static camera enforces that as well.

SB: Yes, exactly.

TDS: One last question about the language and dialects. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I wonder if there’s a distinct dialect in the area where the film is set. If so, would it be difficult for someone in Amsterdam to understand what it is?

SB: Yes, the film will be subtitled in Amsterdam.