Riverlands

Riverlands is a fantasy essay that explores the presence of the forever chemical PFAS in the river Merwede, which has poisoned the land, its fruits, and generations of breast milk.

Diving into these waters, the film encounters whispers of floods that reshaped the land, of life and love born from the river, and of a mysterious cherry tree growing on its banks.

Using family footage and local archives, Riverlands tells the story of generations moving with the tides and the tales passed back and forth within these streams.

With a gently unfolding poetic narration that weaves together intergenerational legends of the Merwede River, the film mobilizes archival footage across multiple registers. The sensory qualities embedded in their materiality—together with the intimate viewpoints and emotional memories carried by family footage—at moments grow estranged and distant, as they are refracted through the filmmaker’s dual perspective as both author and viewer. In this shifting dynamic, the archival images become raw material for speculation and conceptualization. Through a lyrical, essayistic voice and an anthropological sensitivity to the materials at hand, the filmmaker explores her evolving relationship to the archives she gathers and reanimates, seeking a narrative mode—and a calibrated distance—capable of sustaining the stories she hopes to set back in motion.

-By Tang Hongfeng