Official Dutch Selection for 98th Academy Awards, REEDLAND, Opens in NYC, Nov. 14 & in LA, Dec. 12

Admin
Oct 16
4 min read

Official Dutch Entry for Best International Feature

at the 98th Academy Awards

REEDLAND

a film by

SVEN BRESSER

Opens November 14 in New York @Cinema Village

December 12 in Los Angeles @Laemmle Theaters

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Premiered at Cannes Film Festival Critics’ Week in May 2025

WATCH TRAILER HERE

When reed cutter Johan discovers the lifeless body of a girl on his land, he is overcome by an ambiguous sense of guilt. While taking care of his granddaughter, he sets out on a quest to track down evil. But darkness can thrive in unexpected places.

A man, nature and evil. The connection between these elements form the essence o; a portrait of a Dutch landscape, slowly turning into the complex, inner landscape of its main character. Despite its plot, the film is not a classic murder-mystery. The search for a factual truth – the whodunit - is a vehicle to explore a more complex and deeply human truth, and a prompt to reflect on questions of guilt and innocence, violence, and xenophobia.

Director'S Bio:

Sven Bresser is a filmmaker based in Amsterdam. His first short film L’été et tout le reste premiered in the official selection of the 75th Venice International Film Festival, was selected at the Toronto International Film Festival and won the Dutch Academy Award for Best Short film. That same year, his TV film Free Fight was nominated for two Dutch Academy Awards. After finishing the mid-length film She used to sing here in 2021, he started working on his feature film Reedland which premiered at the 2025 Cannes’ Critic’s Week and is the Official Dutch Entry to the 2026 Academy Awards.

Directors Statement [abbreviated below]:

The film begins as a sober portrait of a man living off the land. Johan’s daily routines drive the film; the work on the reed beds, the journey home, eating, drinking, feeding the horse. Routines that become rituals that on one hand connect us to the mundane, the reality and on the other ensure we transcend it. The poetry of the everyday. But after finding the murdered girl, there is a constant sense of threat in the quiet landscape. I myself grew up in a small village surrounded by reed beds. The commercial reed farming here all disappeared somewhere in the early 2000’s and with it the reed landscape as it originally was. I tried to find this landscape that is deeply ingrained in my memory but did not exist anymore in my native village. Not only is the age-old profession of reed-cutting, but also the landscape of the reeds itself, threatened by various factors. There is strong competition from Chinese imports and there are growing neo-liberal and nature reserve policies that make the harvest very difficult. The area is inherently linked to the themes, the main character and the narrative. The discovery of the murdered girl in the reed disrupts Johan’s relationship with nature. Nature reflects Johan’s state of mind and his existential conflict between good and evil. The waving reeds are ambivalent; peaceful and threatening at the same time. The film also tries to question the innocence of nature. The poetic notion of a ‘guilty landscape’ with which the postwar Dutch artist Armando describes nature’s indifference to human suffering, is an idea that gave me a different ‘lens’ to look at this rural environment that I already know my whole life. Over my years of research in the local area, it soon became clear that reed-cutting and the landscape are inextricably linked to socio-economic and political shifts in the world. Globalization has made old crafts like reed cutting unprofitable and causes them to slowly die out. People feel that their way of life is under threat. They want to protect their existence and identity. The whole film takes place within the ‘national boundaries’ of the community; the village as a microcosm under pressure from global forces over which the inhabitants themselves have no control...

FESTIVAL AND AWARDS:

Cannes Film Festival 2025 – Critics’ Week

Sarajevo Film Festival – Kinoscope Section

Olso Pix – In Competition for Audience Award

New Zealand International Film Festival – Fresh Selection

Busan International Film Festival 2025 – Flash Forward Competition

"Outstanding slow-burn thriller announces potentially major new Dutch director...Reedland also recalls Japanese masterpiece Onibaba with hints of supernatural evil...An oustanding discovery.”- VARIETY

“Cannes Hidden Gem: Reedland puts a poetic and claustrophobic lens on rituals, ambiguity, and rvil...Sensuous, haunting and claustrophobic cinematic form.”- THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

“Gripping and highly atmospheric...A work of great visual beauty set in a highly sophisticated mise-en-scène”...(Sven bresser is) Playing on the codes of the Film Noir detective story with a zest of fantasy and hints of deep psychology.”- CINEUROPA

“Astonishing, accomplished...Reedland is fuelled by an intractable ambiguity. It refuses to ascribe easy, simplified definitions of heroism or antagonism...Executing a masterclass in intense atmospherics, Bresser situates a canny character study where the protagonist remains inscrutable. Knobbe wields both magnetic intrigue and the kind that warns us to keep our distance.- HIGH ON FILMS

REEDLAND

Original title: RIETLAND

Production: VIKING FILM — A PRIVATE VIEW

Nationality: NETHERLANDS — BELGIUM

Year of production: 2025

Running time: 111'

Language: DUTCH

Format: 2.39

Sound 5.1