‘First Zone’ review: Striking Dutch survival thriller proves an Edinburgh competition highlight

Dir: Thom Lunshof. Netherlands. 2026. 84mins

The climate emergency hangs ominously, if enigmatically, over this strong debut feature from Dutch writer-director Thom Lunshof. First Zone takes one of the defining characteristics of the Netherlands – that roughly a third of the country sits below sea level – and turns it into a bleak, claustrophobic dystopian odyssey in which one woman struggles to return home across an endlessly flooded landscape.

Accomplished atmospherics and contemporary resonance 

Home, in this case, offers only relative comforts: it’s the stark concrete interior of a disused, decaying wind turbine, where we encounter tough, battle-scarred Fenna (Hadewych Minis), alone and resourceful. An establishing shot of a line of electricity pylons half-submerged in a never ending sea is the closest we come to an explanation of why she is there. As to where we are more broadly: an on-screen title tells us simply, ‘Zone 1’.

Dutch audiences – with their familiarity with sea defences and dams – might wince more than most at the sight of a devastating flood and Fenna’s subsequent grim adventure. The clear-eyed despair of First Zone plays like a watery spin on Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. But it also taps into universal fears, both current and more primal. The local-language film has its world premiere in Edinburgh competition, and its accomplished atmospherics and contemporary resonance should catch the attention of adventurous distributors and other festival programmers, especially those concerned with climate and the environment.

Fenna, weathered and purposeful, wearing a torchlight on her head like a stranded miner, carries a square metal locket around her neck, and there are brief oblique flashbacks to happier times as a mother. Her stark routine involves disappearing into the water below the turbine, through an escape hatch, and returning again. It’s during one of these episodes that she becomes trapped and is swept into the stormy open sea, falling unconscious. Rescued by a family on a boat in another watery enclave, she’s now in ‘Zone 11’. This marks the first of her encounters with other survivors – some adults, some children – and the start of a perilous journey back through several zones. 

One of the most striking things about First Zone – and one of the most disturbing – is how naturalistic this all feels. Obvious special effects are few; Lunshof and his team clearly make powerful use of real exterior Dutch locations. There’s something ghostly and a little magic, for example, when we see two characters walking through an expanse of still water that only reaches up to their knees. Adding to the spare feel is Nico Maas’s melancholic, pared-down guitar score, with its echoes of Ry Cooder’s work in Paris, Texas.

A smart counterbalance to the human suffering is Sami El Hassani’s cinematography, presented in widescreen and often wide-angle. It finds welcome beauty in the waterscapes. Special mention should go, too, to Minis in the lead role of Fenna. She’s in every scene of the film and gives an understated, often silent performance in keeping with the film’s damped-down but quietly despairing emotions.

Lunshof (who previously made six short films, including an award-winning graduation film, Harmonia, in 2020) and co-writer Sam Dijkstra are unafraid of putting their audience through the wringer, not least when it comes to the terrifyingly thin line between life and death underwater. One episode, in which Fenna meets the younger, more exuberant Ive (Violet Braeckman), threatens to descend into cliché, which is absent elsewhere – but this chapter, too, has a sting in its tail. The film rewards attention and thought, and even the late flash of hope it offers is presented quietly. This mild optimism relating to Fenna’s destiny, if not humanity at large, is there if you want it, but it is subtle and remains entirely in keeping with the film’s consistent sombre mood.