Still: Pig - Rutger Veenstra

At no point in Rutger Veenstra’s short film Pig (Baarch) are we told the crime that Nanne’s son Arnout committed, and for which he has served time in prison. But it was obviously a very serious one, given the level of disgust still felt by the local community. Even Nanne is ostracised, whether in the local hardware shop where his credit facility is withdrawn, or when he tries to book a haircut for his son. The head of a pig is impaled upon his farm gate, and the trauma of the incident was obviously enough to drive Arnout’s mother away from the family home.

But the bond of blood is stronger than community ties, and despite the revulsion he feels for his son, Nanne also recognises that Arnout has no support mechanism he can call upon, at which point his paternal instinct, hitherto kept tightly under wraps, begins to re-surface…

“From the dad's point of view, he'd rather send the boy away forever,” explains Veenstra. “But can he do that? The mother chooses to step away, but if the father does that as well, then he knows that his son will be lost forever, that everything will be gone for him. So the father eventually makes a very tiny movement towards him, because he can't afford to let go.”

The locally supported film may have had its world-premiere at the Netherlands Film Festival in September 2024 and selected at Movies That Matter (The Hague), but it is not a Dutch language work. Rather, it was shot in the country’s second language of Friesian. “It is a language in which you don't say much,” explains Veenstra of his mother tongue.

“So the film is more about what's not being said than what you literally say. When it is shown in festivals abroad [it screened recently at Emden in Germany], that's something people really respond to. Very silent, not saying anything, few words said.” 

When Pig screened at the Noordelijk Film Festival in Friesland, the reaction was very strong. “People said, ‘finally a film in our language,’” the director recalls. It continues its journey at Palm Springs (California) in late June where it receives its North American premiere.

It is a film reminiscent in tone and atmosphere to Nanouk Leopold’s It's All So Quiet which also tells of a farmer, but one who realizes that his life has been influenced to an unhealthy extent by his aging father. The comparison to highly lauded Leopold is one that Veenstra is happy to accept. 

What’s more, his story was inspired in part by real events, after he and his family relocated to the farm he had grown up in 20 years previously. Soon after they arrived, a drunk joyrider killed one of the local villagers. “It was like in the film. People withdrew, people didn’t speak to the family of the joyrider. It was the family’s blood that caused the accident. That's what I found interesting,” he says. 

“And there's, of course, a part of the film that describes me and my father…,” Veenstra adds.

The film received support from The Promised Land, a new development and production initiative of Screen Talent NL, aimed at strengthening the film production infrastructure in the Dutch regions and supported by the Netherlands Film Fund. 

Audiences and critics alike have admired a work that is deliciously nuanced and understated, and wonderfully acted by a cast that hail from Friesland’s strong thespian culture. “There are so many particular interpretations, I suppose, you can draw from the film and the actors’ performances. You have to do a little bit of work in watching it, but they’re the kinds of films I like.”

Find out more about Palm Springs International ShortFest here.