‘Reedland’ review: A violent crime rocks a rural Dutch community

Dir/scr: Sven Bresser. Netherlands/Belgium. 2025. 111mins

When ageing Dutch reed cutter Johan (Gerrit Knobbe) discovers the body of a young girl on his land, his need to uncover the perpetrator of the violent crime sends him down an increasingly dark path. For his debut feature, Dutch filmmaker Sven Bresser has returned to the landscape in which he grew up, and effectively contrasts the country setting, its languid pace and unchanged traditions, with themes of intolerance, suspicion and guilt.

A compelling sense of foreboding

Bresser’s 2018 Corsica-set short The Summer And All The Rest played Venice and Toronto in 2018, and he now comes to Cannes Critics’ Week with Reedland; notable for being the first Dutch feature to premiere there since The Polish Bride in 1998. It has a arresting asset in newcomer Knobbe, a professional reed cutter, and its confident visual style could also help attract further festivals and distributors looking for distinct international voices.

Filmed in Weerribben-Wieden, in the northern Netherlands, Reedland opens with a hypnotic extended shot of the wind rustling through an expansive sea of golden reeds. This will become a repeated visual motif, taking on an increasingly oppressive tone as Johan goes further down his psychological rabbit hole. Johan is, however, no gung-ho vigilante; the crime has rocked the very foundations of his simple life, in which he harvests, keeps a modest home following the death of his wife and looks after his beloved granddaughter Dana (Lois Reinders). His discovery of the half-naked body of a local girl is a trauma that leaches into both the seemingly-peaceful community and himself, forcing Johan to confront some of his own difficult feelings and desires.

As Johan, Knobbe has a taciturn demeanour that belies the emotions beneath his weather-beaten surface. He wears the same stoic expression whether he’s quietly eating his meat and potatoes, indulging in internet porn or performing as a hippo alongside Dana in the local children’s play. Occasional flashes of emotion speak to the love he has for Dana and the anger he feels towards the unknown perpetrator of this murder. He, like the others of his generation, feel a responsibility to preserve this landscape from malevolent forces – not only the killer, but ruthless government agencies, determined to turn the reedlands into a more lucrative commodity, the faraway Chinese, forever cutting prices, and, closer to home, farming rivals across the river, disparagingly referred to as ‘Trooters’.

This is a proud, defiant, insular community but one in precarious balance and, working alongside Bresser’s restrained screenplay, DoP Sam du Pon effectively, if somewhat obviously, contrasts the stunning vistas with darker imagery; fragmented close-ups of the dead girl, the slaughter of a diseased cow. At community events – the dead girl’s funeral, a town hall meeting, the local fair – the camera lingers on the benign faces of the men present, young and old, attempting, like Johan, to work out who among them has the capacity be a violent killer.

There is a palpable sense, too, that something less corporeal may be at work on these lands, an ancient evil that hides in the reedbeds, moves in the mesmerising twilight smoke from burning reed bales, takes strength from the ever-changing weather. Johan is seemingly in tune with this marauding force – or, perhaps, is in touch with something buried deep inside himself. Bresser keeps things deliberately ambiguous but, while the film never quite tips over into horror, its confident use of genre elements, including heightened natural sound design from Kwinten Van Laethem, give it a compelling sense of foreboding.