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ATLANTIS

By Digna SINKE

Drama - Completed 2008

Xenia (14) is a shy girl who doesn’t feel comfortable in the over-regulated society she’s living in. Searching for a place of her own, she discovers an island where time doesn’t seem to exist. This is where she finds the key to her future.

- Year of production
- 2008
- Genres
- Drama
- Countries
- NETHERLANDS
- Languages
- DUTCH
- Budget
- N/A
- Duration
- 90 mn
- Director(s)
- Digna SINKE
- Writer(s)
- Digna SINKE
- Cast
- Pitou NICOLAES
- Synopsis
- A shy fourteen-year old girl, lives in a suburb of a major port with her parents and her brother. Their lives are regulated by the government and seem safe, as long as one sticks to the rules, that is. Xenia does her very best to comply with the rules, but at night she has disturbing dreams, in which she wanders through landscapes and buildings without ever finding a way out. When will her first kiss take place? One day, on her daily route from home to school she meets an old man, FRANS. He wants her to post a letter for him on ‘the island’. Xenia freezes. ‘The island’ is taboo, it has yet to be ‘normalised’. Intrigued however, Xenia lets the FERRYMAN ferry her across. She arrives at a farm that’s inhabited by AGNES, an ancient lady. As Agnes reads the letter, Xenia looks around. The sun seems to move faster in the sky. And in the distance she can hear artillery. Back at the ferry, Xenia sees a parade of white Mercedes vans arrive on the island with men on board who will tend to the normalisation. As soon as she gets the chance, Xenia secretly returns to the island, to Agnes. But on her third visit, Xenia doesn’t find Agnes. Inside Agnes’s house it’s a complete mess and when she sees the Mercedes vans arriving outside, she runs to the well and dives into the deep. Xenia surfaces – in the past, fifty years ago. There’s a storm going on. The island is confronted with flooding and threatens to disappear into the sea. Agnes, much younger now, explains that this is the only way to save the island from definitive regulation. History can’t be allowed to be cleared away here. What did the letter say? Xenia asks. Agnes lets her read it: The future is hers. On her way back, Xenia knows that she has found her own little Atlantis. The next day she kisses a boy from her class.