Still: The Clearing - Sabine Groenewegen

Produced by near/by film in co-production with Groenewegen herself, the film will have its world premiere in Marseille. Sales are handled by Kino Rebelde.

In The Clearing, Groenewegen constructs a meditative and forensic investigation into the hidden histories of Dutch colonialism. The film begins in the early 20th century, when a Javanese girl is lured onto a ship to Sumatra under the promise of a better life. Upon arrival, she finds herself trapped on a colonial rubber plantation, where forced labour and systemic exploitation underpin the production of global profit.

For Groenewegen, the film emerges from a personal and archival search into family history and colonial absence. “I grew up in a Dutch provincial town continually shocked by the normalized hostility towards those deemed different,” she explains. “My first film was driven by the need to understand whiteness in the context of historical racial capitalism.”

The discovery of a photograph of her great-grandmother became a starting point for a deeper investigation into erased histories of Asian women on Dutch colonial plantations, and the mechanisms through which their stories were obscured or forgotten.

The Clearing is Sabine Groenewegen’s second feature-length film, following Odyssey (2018), which won the Doc Alliance Award for Best Film in 2019 and Best Experimental Feature at the Istanbul Experimental Film Festival. 

Find out more about FIDMarseille here.