The North (Bart Schrijver, 2025)

The North, the new feature film from Dutch director-producer Bart Schrijver, has been shortlisted for the European Film Awards.  The film has received an incredible response in a very short space of time: this year alone, the film has enjoyed theatrical runs in Luxembourg, Belgium, and Schrijver’s native Netherlands—where the film has already been viewed by over 115,000 people, making it only the second Dutch film this year to achieve such viewing figures.  The film also hit the number one spot in the Dutch Arthouse Top 30 for seven weeks.  Alongside The North, the team created a documentary, True North.

A decade after being best friends and roommates, Chris (Bart Harder) and Lluis (Carles Pulido) set out on a 600-kilometre hike through the Scottish Highlands.  Following the West Highland Way and the Cape Wrath Trail, they spend 30 days together in nature, hoping to rekindle their once-powerful friendship.  But while Chris remains preoccupied with work and life back home, Lluis is determined to finish the trail to prove he can do it.  The solitude and silence of the Highlands forces them to confront harsh truths about themselves, their friendship, and what it truly means to stand still and listen.

Written and directed by Schrijver, who co-produced with Arnold Janssen and Tom Holscher, The North was made for a mere €75,000 with a cast and crew of only eight people.  The team at Tuesday Studio, the production company behind the film, originally planned to simply sell the film online on their own TVOD website; however, after a glowing four-star review from The Guardian, everything changed.  More glowing coverage followed, including a piece in De Standaard, and the ball kept rolling until it landed at the doorstep of the European Film Academy, who shortlisted the project in the Feature Film category.

Schrijver began his career while studying architecture.  Using his first short films as his film school, he directed five shorts in his first year as a fiction director.  Since making the leap from short films to feature-length projects proved challenging, he co-founded a new production company, Tuesday Studio, with Janssen and Holscher.  In 2022, he launched his first project with Tuesday Studio, Human Nature, a film based on his 700-kilometre hike in Arctic Norway.  Schrijver combines his love for nature with his passion for filmmaking; to date, he has created 12 films and has hiked more than 5000 kilometres.

Source/images: Polymath PR

Those Whom Death Refused (Flora Gomes, 1988)

Bissau-Guinean filmmaker Flora Gomes' Those Whom Death Refused (original title: Mortu Nega), which screens in a restored print on Saturday at the BFI London Film Festival, is an arresting portrait of independence and its aftermath.  This keystone of postcolonial African cinema blends documentary techniques with an almost Malick-like lyricism as it focuses on one woman’s ordeal, all the while prioritising mood over conventional narrative.  Set during the Guinea-Bissau war of independence against Portugal and the turbulent years that followed, the haunting Those Whom Death Refused expertly conveys the weight of history.

The 1970s-set film follows Diminga (Bia Gomes), who edges her way through war-ravaged landscapes to find her soldier husband Sako (Tunu Eugenio Almada).  Through Diminga's eyes, Flora Gomes deftly builds a story that examines the psychological burden of conflict on women, and, by bringing Diminga to the forefront of the film, neatly subverts our expectations of an 80s war movie.  Once the war has been won, drought and political instability provide a much-needed reminder that the struggle—albeit one of a very different kind—continues long after the colonial powers have left, as the new nation finds its feet.

The first half of the film is a lean, taut affair, one that underlines the asymmetrical nature of the guerrilla forces taking on the Portuguese, with the latter's helicopters raining down bullets on a makeshift army scampering across the ground.  While it's obvious that the budget for Guinea-Bissau's very first feature film is not particularly high, the action scenes are well mounted, and Gomes manages the tension with style.  The film loosens its grip once both the war and its combat scenes are over, with Gomes observing, with an at times near-ethnographic eye, a newly postcolonial country gingerly feeling its way into independence.

As the film gives way to this more contemplative tone, Gomes captures the landscape of post-war Guinea-Bissau as an almost stone tape-like vessel of memory, with sweeping shots of the countryside reflecting both the scars of war and the immutability of the land.  While Those Whom Death Refused runs to a relatively brief 93 minutes, the film is measured, at times slow, which might make the going tough for those unaccustomed to such cinematic grammar.  But this elliptical rhythm dictates the pace of the storytelling, carving out space for a stillness that acts as a most welcome counterpoint to the political Sturm und Drang.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

Balearic (Ion de Sosa, 2025)

Saint John’s Eve provides the backdrop for Basque director Ion de Sosa's Balearic, which screens tomorrow at the BFI London Film Festival.  La Noche de San Juan, as it's known in Spain, is a midsummer celebration held on the night of 23rd June.  It has arcane roots, fusing ancient pagan sun rituals that pay homage to the year's longest day with Christian traditions marking the birth of Saint John the Baptist.  Saint John’s Eve is especially popular in coastal areas, where revellers gather to light huge bonfires symbolising purification, prior to bathing in the sea, which represents both Jesus' baptism and the concept of renewal.

Balearic gets off to a strong start as four teenagers—three girls and one boy—wander into the grounds of an isolated, seemingly unoccupied mansion.  After some casual chatter, the group decide to take a dip in the villa’s pool, but their fun is cut short when three vicious guard dogs appear.  One of the girls, who happens to be out of the water when the dogs arrive, is savagely attacked and suffers severe injuries.  Although her friends manage to drag her back into the pool, the dogs—curiously unwilling to enter the water—block all available exits, leaving the teens stranded and terrified as one of them slowly bleeds out.

As we're waiting to see how the situation is resolved, the film abruptly cuts to another villa, seemingly not far from the first, where a group of adult friends have gathered to mark the holiday by eating, drinking, and talking.  These people—for whom the label "idle rich" seems wholly appropriate—appear curiously detached from the outside world and strangely indifferent to a wildfire that has started in a nearby forest; one surreal scene shows a firefighting helicopter replenishing its supplies by scooping water from the pool around which these partygoers are sitting.  Alas, if only it had visited another house to do this.

De Sosa's emphasis on both fire and water—two elements that feature so prominently in Saint John's Eve celebrations—forms the foundation of a social critique in which one generation sits pretty while the next is, quite literally, left to the dogs.  This is an intelligent, risky piece of filmmaking, one in which the bold decision to move from the teens' ordeal to something much more diffuse and elusive—the poolside scenes featuring the adults feel almost loose-limbed—might alienate some.  But this nagging, unsettling work, superbly shot on tactile 16mm by Cristina Neira, retains a peculiar grip throughout its brief running time.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI