The Storm

The Storm is about Julia (Sylvia Hoeks), an 18 year old farmer’s daughter from Zeeland, who falls pregnant by her boyfriend Diewer, a fisherman boy. Diewer is so upset by this news that he does a moonlight flit. Julia is all on her own in a hostile village: the pregnancy and the delivery are first judged and then ignored by her family and fellow-villagers.

In the night of 31 January 1953, during a terrible February storm, the dikes in Zeeland are breached in more than a hundred locations and the farm is engulfed by a flood. Julia ends up in the water together with her son and is rescued – against her will – by the young air force sergeant Aldo (Barry Atsma), leaving her baby behind in the water. She is inconsolable, veils herself in silence and refuses to speak to her despised rescuer.

Aldo carefully tries to get in contact with the young woman; bit by bit he unravels her background and finally decides to help her find her son. After all, he is responsible for the fact that she had to leave her baby behind. It is the start of a long search – against the flow of the evacuation – which will finally bring them back to Zeeland again: a submerged, surreal landscape of animal and human corpses. The chance that a baby can survive here is microscopically small. Yet Julia sees signs that her son is still alive. But where? And with whom?