EIFF 2026 – First Zone (De Eerste Zone),
Directed by Thom Lunshof,
Starring Hadewych Minis, Violet Braeckman, Oona De Kok, Aus Greidanus Jr.
Fenna (Hadewych Minis) is living alone, in what looks like an industrial cathedral, which actually turns out to be an enormous offshore wind turbine, one of the few structures still above the waters in this post-climate change world. The Netherlands has always had a precarious relationship with the sea – historically a powerful maritime nation through much of European history, the sea has brought this small nation riches and trading links and influence across the globe. But with so much of the Netherlands lying below sea level, it is also enormously vulnerable to rising sea levels, with even the ingenious systems of dykes, damns, land reclaimed from the seas and more in a constant battle against nature.
In Lunshof’s First Zone, that battle has finally been lost – climate change and higher sea levels have finally overwhelmed the country, leaving a number of “zones” in various stages of flooding, where the small remaining population tries to survive.
Fenna is in Zone 1, entirely alone in her wind turbine castle – there’s an early scene during a storm where we hear someone banging on the steel door to the turbine and begging for help, but she just stand warily on the inside, doing nothing. It’s never entirely clear if there really was someone outside, or if the noises and voices were all in her head, , hallucinations from PTSD and survivor’s guilt (outside there is nothing except more sea and the odd other turbine, so perhaps the voices were imaginary?). Even if not real, it does serve to demonstrate how isolated from humanity Fenna has become. Silent for the most part, she’s simply in survival mode at any cost, no-one else counts.
Of course, she wasn’t always this way. We see her periodically open a hatch and descend into a flooded part of the turbine structure, just floating there, like an isolation tank, sometimes stroking a small box she wears on a chain around her neck, and there are flashbacks to the pre-flood world, a normal home, children, happiness. When something goes wrong with the hatch during a storm, she is forced out of the underwater exit, directly into the raging sea, and taken far from her isolated home, waking up to find she has been fished from the sea by a family group with numerous children, living on a large boat.
This is the start of Fenna’s travels, as she tries to traverse the various zones to head back to her home. She is still quiet, rarely speaking, and very wary and distrustful of any person she meets (she has been alone a long time), no matter how much they try to help her or how friendly they seem to be. On this journey she encounters numerous people, some kind, some hostile, but the one she spends the most time with is Ive (Violet Braeckman), who is the opposite of the stoic, suspicious Fenna, being open, cheerful and friendly, and, as you might imagine in this kind of story, the unusual partnership starts to have an affect of Fenna (although this is no sugar-coated, sweet tale, this is still a fierce, hard fight for survival for all of them in a world changed forever).
While the story may become slightly repetitive as Fenna encounters one group, leaves, heads to the next zone and meets more, repeat, I think that’s actually part of the point: there is no big scene or sudden action or revelation here, it is a slow-paced hard battle to remain alive in this world. Cinematographer Sami El Hassani fills the screen with some amazing visuals, from the industrial Gothic of the part submerged turbine to wide landscape/seascape vistas, all shot using real-world Dutch locations, which adds some verisimilitude to the scenario.
(director Thom Lunshof (right), with actors Hadewych Minis (left) and Violet Braeckman (centre) at the 79th Edinburgh International Film Festival, talking with the Filmhouse audience. Images from my Flickr, click on the pics for the larger versions)
It isn’t all just seascapes either, there are little plots of low-lying land still just above the water, where some eke out a living, and then shallows, barely waist-deep, filled with water-based foliage, traversed by wooden walkways (reminiscent of the Fens in the UK). Nico Maas’s superb, low-fi soundtrack – slightly reminiscent of slide-guitar king Ry Cooder, especially his Paris, Texas music – fits El Hassani’s visuals perfectly. Combining these visuals and soundscape with solid performances from Minis and Braeckman, and you have a slow-burn but compelling tale, in a setting that’s dangerously close to being real and not just fantasy. A tale not just of survival, but of what we can easily lose – our shared humanity – if survival becomes our only goal, because survival is not the same as living.
First Zone was a World Premiere at the 79th Edinburgh International Film Festival
This review was originally penned for Live For Films
