When a reed-cutter finds a girl’s body in the marsh, silence grips his remote Dutch village. Sven Bresser’s debut is an eerily quiet thriller about guilt, violence and the stories that fester when no one speaks.
Reedland is an atmospheric horror film that showcases the roots and shoots of evil in an eerie Dutch landscape, where silence doesn’t actually bestow peace.
Reedland 2025
Reitland
“Premiering in the Critics’ Week section of the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, this existential thriller marks the feature debut of Dutch writer-director Sven Bresser.
The story centers on 60-something reed cutter Johan (Gerrit Knobbe), who lives and works in a small, rural town in the IJsselmeer district in Holland. When he discovers the body of a young woman on his land, Johan sets out to investigate her murder, driven by an ambiguous motivation that could be guilt or something else entirely.
Johan’s suspicions quickly fall on the motorbike-riding son of a rival farmer, but his somewhat clumsy attempts to investigate – sneaking into their barn to look for the motorbike – escalate preexisting tensions to a dangerous degree.
Bresser’s central theme echoes David Lynch’s work in that it excavates the evil that lurks beneath the surface of small-town suburbia. This is an accomplished debut for Bresser, a superbly acted and beautifully shot mystery thriller with a strong sense of place and some satisfyingly Lynchian undertones.” — Matthew Turner, Next Best Picture