The Northerners 1992

A surreal black comedy unfolds in a dilapidated 1960s housing development, where the ordinary rhythms of community life are warped by odd passions, stubborn loneliness, and sudden, dreamlike turns. Martha, Annet Malherbe, begins to be treated as a saint after visions that disturb and fascinate the town, and her increasingly devoted behavior transforms their home into a shrine that unsettles her husband, Jacob, Jack Wouterse the local butcher, who struggles to keep the household together as his own desires collide with the strange devotion surrounding them.

Thomas, Leonard Lucieer, a twelve-year-old boy, becomes preoccupied with the news on broadcast television—especially the unfolding events surrounding the liberation of the Belgian Congo—and adopts the name Lumumba, after Patrice Lumumba, letting the world of headlines pull him away from his childhood. He retreats into the forest, spending long hours away from the home, where his imagination roams free and where danger and wonder mingle.

In the forest, Thomas encounters Agnes, Veerle Dobbelaere a half-naked woman who lives among the trees and hides at the bottom of a pond. She teaches him how to breathe underwater by sucking on a stem, a strange skill that deepens his sense of escape from the town’s messy realities. This new world is gently encouraged by Simon, the postman who seems to know the town’s intimate secrets and helps keep Thomas’s fantasy alive.

Meanwhile, Anton, Rudolf Lucieer the forester, moves through the woods with a volatile mix of aggression and longing, unable to satisfy his wife Elisabeth’s needs. Elisabeth, Loes Wouterson, finds herself increasingly drawn to a life beyond the unstable marriage, especially as the fault lines in Anton’s life widen and threaten both family and terrain alike. Two Belgian priests arrive in town, bringing with them an exhibition of Africana and a troubling presence in the form of a man referred to as the Negro, a figure whose appearance unsettles the fragile balance of power and fear in the community.

Jacob’s behavior grows more predatory as he becomes capable of cruelty toward women, loosening the town’s moral grip on itself. Thomas’s explorations with Agnes intensify, yet his mother’s claimed divine signs cast a long shadow over every moment of their growing closeness. In a shocking turn, Anton catches Simon in a compromising moment while awkwardly attempting to confront the magazine’s adult content, and his pursuit of the Negro spirals into violence. Tragically, Agnes is killed, and her body is hidden beneath the pond, an act that reverberates through the town when the Negro witnesses it and retaliates by blinding Anton.

As Elisabeth carries Jacob’s child, she chooses to leave Anton, recognizing that his erotic void has made him unfit to be a husband or father. Martha’s fasting leaves her bedridden, and the villagers gather to pray at her window, treating her not as a disturbed woman but as a saintly figure. A church ceremony follows, officially recognizing Martha in a way that seems to blur faith with feverish spectacle.

Events continue to destabilize: Jacob’s world, already strained, grows more unmanageable as the consequences of hiding truth and fear press outward. The blind Anton is later found dead from the cold beneath a tree, a stark reminder of the harshness that runs beneath the town’s quiet surface, and the Negro departs the area, leaving the community to its uncertain fate. News of Lumumba’s murder reaches Thomas, deepening his sorrow and distance from the world he once tried to understand. In the end, Simon returns to resume his role as post-master, and Thomas welcomes him with a cautious warmth, as if the town’s strange routine might endure—at least for now.