Short Films

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International Competition

SWEET DREAMS

• Director: Ena Sendijarević 
• THE NETHERLANDS, SWEDEN, INDONESIA, FRANCE / 2023 / DCP / Colour / 103’ / Indonesian, Dutch; Turkish, English s.t.

• Screenplay: Ena Sendijarević 
• Director of Photography: Emo Weemhoff
• Editing: Lot Rossmark
• Music: Martial Foe
• Cast: Renée Soutendijk, Hayati Azis, Lisa Zweerman, Florian Myjer, Muhammad Khan, Hans Dagelet, Rio den Haas, Peter Faber, Verdi Solaiman
• Producer: Erik Glijnis, Leontine Petit
• Production Co.: Lemming Film
• World Sales: Heretic

2024 İstanbul Special Jury Prize
2023 Locarno Best Performance
2023 Chicago New Directors Award
2023 Nederlands FF Best Film, Best Director, Best Leading Role, Best Supporting Role, Best Costume, Best Cinematography

Unforgiving satire meets lavish aesthetics in a game of cat and mouse in the audacious tale of the tragic and delicious demise of European Colonialism. A sugar plantation in the Dutch East Indies (current day Indonesia), 1900s. The Dutch colonists are in power in this cosmos, but power is shifting. After the sudden death of the patriarch and sugar factory owner, everyone’s position in the pecking order is at stake–the fed-up wife, the native concubine, the ambitious son and his pregnant wife. In the midst of a worker’s uprising, as the weather gets hotter and hotter, ideals prove to be idle and blood thicker than water. The Netherlands’ official Oscars candidate is directed by Bosnian-Dutch filmmaker Ena Sendijarević: ‘I pictured a film where the banality of violence is underlined. It is not a conventional period film, but a stylised satire, one that presents reality as magical, at times surrealist fiction.’

This film is screened with the generous contribution of General Consulate of the Netherlands.

This film was a Meetings on the Bridge participant.