Viewer Advice: Contains themes of sexual violence.

The desperate absurdities of colonisation are laid bare in this acidic satire of a Dutch family’s fallout following the death of their wealthy patriarch.

On a sugar plantation in the Dutch East Indies in 1900, wealthy landowner Jan dies suddenly. After making little effort to assist while witnessing his demise, his widow Agathe sends for their son Cornelis to return from Europe and take over amid unrest from the estate’s workers. Accompanied by his pregnant wife Josefien, Cornelis soon learns his father has written him out of the will in favour of his half-brother Karel, the product of the oppressor having his way with the oppressed: the family’s Indonesian housekeeper Siti.

Restrained in its brutality yet with an acerbic undercurrent, Sweet Dreams is the assured second film from Bosnian-Dutch filmmaker Ena Sendijarević, which took home Locarno’s Best Performance Award (for lead actor Renée Soutendijk). Intent on subverting the conventional period drama, the writer/director – who found inspiration in Juraj Herz’s The Cremator (MIFF 1970; MIFF 2019) – instead sought to confront the Netherlands’ colonial trespasses using dark humour and contemporary film language. This decision manifests in the hyper-stylised world of the family’s opulent estate and its lurid colours, the confining Academy aspect ratio, and the evocative sound design (with compositions by Martial Foe), all building to what Sendijarević has dubbed a “horrific fairy tale”.

“Startlingly accomplished … 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.” – Variety