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Malaise is the order of the day in Dutch-Bosnian writer-director Ena Sendijarević’s costume drama Sweet Dreams. Set in the Dutch East Indies at the dawn of the 20th century, the film captures the putrefaction of colonial rule with a morbid sense of humor. But for a work that’s all about boredom, Sweet Dreams is far from boring.
It’s the suspicious demise of Dutch sugar plantation owner Jan (Hans Dagelet) that sets the plot in motion. Agathe (Renée Soutendijk), the man’s profoundly cynical widow, writes to their son, Cornelis (Florian Myjer), telling him to return from the Netherlands to take over the estate. But when Cornelis and his pregnant wife, Josefien (Lisa Zweerman), arrive, it turns out that Jan has left everything to Karel (Rio Kak Den Haas), the progeny of his unconcealed liaisons with the family’s domestic servant, Siti (Hayati Azis). If Cornelis and Josefien...
It’s the suspicious demise of Dutch sugar plantation owner Jan (Hans Dagelet) that sets the plot in motion. Agathe (Renée Soutendijk), the man’s profoundly cynical widow, writes to their son, Cornelis (Florian Myjer), telling him to return from the Netherlands to take over the estate. But when Cornelis and his pregnant wife, Josefien (Lisa Zweerman), arrive, it turns out that Jan has left everything to Karel (Rio Kak Den Haas), the progeny of his unconcealed liaisons with the family’s domestic servant, Siti (Hayati Azis). If Cornelis and Josefien...
- 4/7/2024
- by William Repass
- Slant Magazine
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Ena Sendijarević’s “Sweet Dreams,” Netherlands’ submission in the Academy Awards international feature category, has secured North American distribution via Dekanalog.
The film had its world premiere at Locarno, where it won the Pardo for best performance for Renée Soutendijk (“Suspiria”) and the second prize of the junior jury. The film debuted in North America in Toronto’s Centrepiece section and won the Silver Hugo new directors award at Chicago. It opened the Nederlands Film Festival, where it won another six awards, including best film, best director and best leading role.
Set on a remote Indonesian island, “Sweet Dreams” explores the final days of European colonialism. It follows Dutch sugar plantation owner Jan and his wife Agathe, who are at the top of the food chain. Jan, upon returning from his nightly visit to his native concubine Siti, suddenly drops dead in front of his wife. Desperate to keep the privileges of her status quo,...
The film had its world premiere at Locarno, where it won the Pardo for best performance for Renée Soutendijk (“Suspiria”) and the second prize of the junior jury. The film debuted in North America in Toronto’s Centrepiece section and won the Silver Hugo new directors award at Chicago. It opened the Nederlands Film Festival, where it won another six awards, including best film, best director and best leading role.
Set on a remote Indonesian island, “Sweet Dreams” explores the final days of European colonialism. It follows Dutch sugar plantation owner Jan and his wife Agathe, who are at the top of the food chain. Jan, upon returning from his nightly visit to his native concubine Siti, suddenly drops dead in front of his wife. Desperate to keep the privileges of her status quo,...
- 12/7/2023
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
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The Netherlands has selected its acclaimed Dutch drama film, ‘Sweet Dreams’ by director Ena Sendijarevic, as its official entry, in the International Feature category for the 96th Academy Awards, in 2024. The film had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival in August, winning the film’s actress Renee Soutendijk a best performance award. In addition, ‘Sweet Dreams’ is also set to get its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, according to Hollywood Reporter.
According to the film’s description, ‘Sweet Dreams’ is a dark humour based satire which is very ‘unforgiving’ in its take on European colonialism, showcasing how the lavish aesthetics and majestic lifestyle of colonial Europe soon came to a bitter end, and how its power and standard was reduced.
The synopsis reads: “On an Indonesian island, 1900, Dutch sugar plantation owner Jan and his wife, Agathe, are at the top of the food chain.
According to the film’s description, ‘Sweet Dreams’ is a dark humour based satire which is very ‘unforgiving’ in its take on European colonialism, showcasing how the lavish aesthetics and majestic lifestyle of colonial Europe soon came to a bitter end, and how its power and standard was reduced.
The synopsis reads: “On an Indonesian island, 1900, Dutch sugar plantation owner Jan and his wife, Agathe, are at the top of the food chain.
- 9/6/2023
- by Agency News Desk
- GlamSham
![Image](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BNGJmMjg0NjktYTA4Ni00YmEzLWFhZGUtMjFiOWFhNjA4NzdlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTE0MzQwMjgz._V1_QL75_UX140_CR0,0,140,140_.jpg)
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The Netherlands has selected Ena Sendijarević’s Sweet Dreams as its official entry in the international feature film race at the 2024 Oscars.
The film had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival in August, winning Dutch actress Renée Soutendijk a best performance award. It will get its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
“The film combines unforgiving satire with lavish aesthetics in an audacious tale of the tragic and delicious demise of European colonialism,” according to a description. “On an Indonesian island, 1900, Dutch sugar plantation owner Jan and his wife, Agathe, are at the top of the food chain. Until Jan upon returning from his nightly visit to his native concubine Siti, suddenly drops dead. To keep her status quo, Agathe forces her son Cornelis and his pregnant wife Josefien to travel from Europe and take over the family business. In the midst of a worker’s uprising,...
The film had its world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival in August, winning Dutch actress Renée Soutendijk a best performance award. It will get its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
“The film combines unforgiving satire with lavish aesthetics in an audacious tale of the tragic and delicious demise of European colonialism,” according to a description. “On an Indonesian island, 1900, Dutch sugar plantation owner Jan and his wife, Agathe, are at the top of the food chain. Until Jan upon returning from his nightly visit to his native concubine Siti, suddenly drops dead. To keep her status quo, Agathe forces her son Cornelis and his pregnant wife Josefien to travel from Europe and take over the family business. In the midst of a worker’s uprising,...
- 9/6/2023
- by Georg Szalai
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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Bosnian-Dutch filmmaker Ena Sendijarević’s Locarno prizewinner “Sweet Dreams,” a droll satire set on a sugar plantation in colonial-era Indonesia, has released its first trailer. Athens-based production and sales outfit Heretic has given Variety exclusive access ahead of the film’s North American premiere in the Centerpiece section of the Toronto Film Festival (see below).
“Sweet Dreams” is set on a remote island in the Dutch East Indies during the waning days of the colonial era. It centers on Dutch plantation owner Jan (Hans Dagelet) and his wife, Agathe (Renée Soutendijk), who are at the top of the food chain. That is, until Jan, upon returning from his nightly visit to his native concubine, Siti (Hayati Azis), suddenly drops dead in front of his wife.
Desperate to keep the privileges of her status quo, Agathe forces her estranged son Cornelius (Florian Myjer) and his heavily pregnant wife, Josefien (Lisa Zweerman...
“Sweet Dreams” is set on a remote island in the Dutch East Indies during the waning days of the colonial era. It centers on Dutch plantation owner Jan (Hans Dagelet) and his wife, Agathe (Renée Soutendijk), who are at the top of the food chain. That is, until Jan, upon returning from his nightly visit to his native concubine, Siti (Hayati Azis), suddenly drops dead in front of his wife.
Desperate to keep the privileges of her status quo, Agathe forces her estranged son Cornelius (Florian Myjer) and his heavily pregnant wife, Josefien (Lisa Zweerman...
- 9/4/2023
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
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It takes place on a sugar plantation, but Ena Sendijarević’s magnificently composed, eerily satirical “Sweet Dreams” has something more like acid flowing through its veins. Acid — or maybe formaldehyde, given the embalmed pallor of the dysfunctional Dutch colonial family whose values are so elegantly dissected within it. In only her second feature, after the Rotterdam-awarded “Take Me Somewhere Nice,” the Bosnian-Dutch filmmaker has established herself as a formidable talent with an eye for absurdity in Academy ratio, and a feel for the manicured, placid surfaces that contain rot and rebellion just as corsetry cinches in flesh.
It is 1900, and this little corner of the Dutch East Indies is verdant, damp jungle terrain. The air is thick with biting insects. Vincent Sinceretti’s extravagantly rich sound design is so multilayered that you can differentiate the crickets from the gnats from the omnipresent, whining mosquitoes. But part of the wilderness has been tamed — or more accurately,...
It is 1900, and this little corner of the Dutch East Indies is verdant, damp jungle terrain. The air is thick with biting insects. Vincent Sinceretti’s extravagantly rich sound design is so multilayered that you can differentiate the crickets from the gnats from the omnipresent, whining mosquitoes. But part of the wilderness has been tamed — or more accurately,...
- 8/25/2023
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
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Writer-director Ena Sendijarević’s second feature, Sweet Dreams, follows a recent trend of arthouse films — including Zama, The Settlers and The Tale of King Crab — that explore Europe’s troubled colonial history through a postmodern mix of satire, surrealism and cinematic lyricism.
All of these elements are present in a story set in 1900 in the Dutch East Indies, where a family running a prosperous sugar plantation finds its status quo upended when their patriarch suddenly passes away. Left to deal with the fallout, the landowner’s wife and children are quickly exposed to the limits, as well as the terrors, of colonialism, in the face of Indigenous people who refuse to keep bowing down.
Shot in the 1.33:1 Academy ratio and divided into chapters like a novella, Sendijarević’s movie maintains a certain distance from its subject, gazing at it through a contemporary prism that critiques the racism and exploitation of the epoch.
All of these elements are present in a story set in 1900 in the Dutch East Indies, where a family running a prosperous sugar plantation finds its status quo upended when their patriarch suddenly passes away. Left to deal with the fallout, the landowner’s wife and children are quickly exposed to the limits, as well as the terrors, of colonialism, in the face of Indigenous people who refuse to keep bowing down.
Shot in the 1.33:1 Academy ratio and divided into chapters like a novella, Sendijarević’s movie maintains a certain distance from its subject, gazing at it through a contemporary prism that critiques the racism and exploitation of the epoch.
- 8/7/2023
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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As Leo Tolstoy wrote, all happy families are alike, while each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. The rich cry too and there is something universal about the rivalries between the loved and the unloved wives, sons and heirs, regardless of their social status. So, why would the family of the sugar plantation owners in the Dutch East Indies in Ena Sendijarević's sophomore feature “Sweet Dreams” be any different? The film has just world-premiered at Locarno, where we also caught it.
Sweet Dreams is screening in Locarno Film Festival
Somewhere in Indonesia in the early 1900s, Jan (Hans Dagelet) owns the plantation and the sugar processing plant and rules it with an iron fist. He is no softer even at home, where he commands over his seemingly blasée European wife Agathe (Renée Soutendijk) and his Indonesian housekeeper-lover-concubine Siti (Hayati Azis), while the two battle one another, each...
Sweet Dreams is screening in Locarno Film Festival
Somewhere in Indonesia in the early 1900s, Jan (Hans Dagelet) owns the plantation and the sugar processing plant and rules it with an iron fist. He is no softer even at home, where he commands over his seemingly blasée European wife Agathe (Renée Soutendijk) and his Indonesian housekeeper-lover-concubine Siti (Hayati Azis), while the two battle one another, each...
- 8/6/2023
- by Marko Stojiljković
- AsianMoviePulse
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Editor’s Note: This review originally published during the 2023 Locarno Film Festival. Dekanalog will release “Sweet Dreams” in U.S. theaters on Friday, April 12.
Two-thirds of the way into Ena Sendijarević’s stylized sophomore feature “Sweet Dreams”, a heavily pregnant white Dutch colonialist, Josefien (Lisa Zweerman), is attempting to relieve some pent-up hormonal tension by straddling her bedpost and getting herself off. It is at this exact moment that an Indonesian housegirl, Siti (Hayati Azis), walks in bearing a jug of water and a glass.
Josefien experiences no shame and seizes her chance to manipulate Siti, for Siti has the status afforded by bearing the illegitimate son, Karel (Rio Den Haas), of the recently deceased plantation head, Jan (Hans Dagelet). Unbeknownst to Siti, Jan left it all to Karel and now the young heir and his mother both have targets on their backs for Jan’s older son, Cornelius (Florian Myjer...
Two-thirds of the way into Ena Sendijarević’s stylized sophomore feature “Sweet Dreams”, a heavily pregnant white Dutch colonialist, Josefien (Lisa Zweerman), is attempting to relieve some pent-up hormonal tension by straddling her bedpost and getting herself off. It is at this exact moment that an Indonesian housegirl, Siti (Hayati Azis), walks in bearing a jug of water and a glass.
Josefien experiences no shame and seizes her chance to manipulate Siti, for Siti has the status afforded by bearing the illegitimate son, Karel (Rio Den Haas), of the recently deceased plantation head, Jan (Hans Dagelet). Unbeknownst to Siti, Jan left it all to Karel and now the young heir and his mother both have targets on their backs for Jan’s older son, Cornelius (Florian Myjer...
- 8/5/2023
- by Sophie Monks Kaufman
- Indiewire
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Heretic has acquired world sales rights to “Sweet Dreams,” the sophomore feature from award-winning Bosnian Dutch director Ena Sendijarević (“Take Me Somewhere Nice”).
Set on a remote Indonesian island during the waning days of the colonial era, the film centers on Dutch sugar plantation owner Jan and his wife, Agathe, who are at the top of the food chain. That is, until Jan, upon returning from his nightly visit to his native concubine, Siti, suddenly drops dead in front of his wife.
Desperate to keep the privileges of her status quo, Agathe forces her estranged son Cornelis and his heavily pregnant wife, Josefien, to travel from Europe and take over the family business. In the midst of a workers’ uprising, Cornelis displays his plans for progressive change. But when Jan’s will puts Siti at the forefront of the family estate, ideals prove to be idle and blood thicker than water.
Set on a remote Indonesian island during the waning days of the colonial era, the film centers on Dutch sugar plantation owner Jan and his wife, Agathe, who are at the top of the food chain. That is, until Jan, upon returning from his nightly visit to his native concubine, Siti, suddenly drops dead in front of his wife.
Desperate to keep the privileges of her status quo, Agathe forces her estranged son Cornelis and his heavily pregnant wife, Josefien, to travel from Europe and take over the family business. In the midst of a workers’ uprising, Cornelis displays his plans for progressive change. But when Jan’s will puts Siti at the forefront of the family estate, ideals prove to be idle and blood thicker than water.
- 5/15/2023
- by Christopher Vourlias
- Variety Film + TV
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