TAKE A PERFECTLY insane tale of paternal love and marital abhorrence, the filthiest vagaries of colonialist practice, the prospect of freedom and untold wealth. Toss them in the air with a gun, a visual sensibility to weep for and an understanding of sound that is at once contemporary and raw, and you will have one of the finest pieces of work on this year’s European Film Festival: Sweet Dreams, written and directed by Ena Sendijarevic. The festival is once again online for free and at cinemas in Johannesburg and Cape Town, from 10 until 20 October 2024.

Sweet Dreams, situated in the complicated cleavage between Dutch and Indonesian culture, takes place in a rich old manor in Indonesia, signifying Dutch presence in all its opulence and fragility. It’s not just a house. It’s a heritage on a sugarcane farm with a factory on the side and a staff of many. Set in the late 19th century, just on the point where colonialist practice was beginning to sour in its over-the-top sense of acquisition, it’s a yarn cast crudely and obviously but emblazoned with a cloyingly rich sense of contrast and pattern that will stay with you.

It is here where we meet a perfectly focused little boy in white armed with a rifle and sitting astride the shoulders of a white man. In his cross-hairs, a tiger. This is Karel (played by Rio Kaz Den Haaz), the story’s pivot. It’s a surreal piece of narrative, both dramatic and slapstick in its premises and events. The misery of colonial arrival in the mosquito-riddled heat of the tropics tilts your empathies in different directions as they make you smile with a bit of schadenfreude for the hapless second generation of the family.

A death, with no clear evidence of a rotting body; a massive estate with a surprising heir and a slave woman named Siti (Hayati Azis) who learns of the comings and goings by hearsay rather than being spoken to directly, form the skeleton of the tale. The matriarch, Agathe (Renée Soutendijk) has all the grim sense of ceremony and internalised disappointment of Dickens’s Miss Havisham. And yet somewhere in there, there is empathy. These two women are like book-ends to this tale of crude injustice and broken promises.

Indeed, the core of it speaks to Damon Galgut’s The Promise as it evokes Etienne van Heerden’s 2003 novel The Long Silence of Mario Salviati in its dark humour and extraordinary contexts. There is an impeccable use of colour in the filmography, which will make you want to see this work in a big movie house rather than on your phone; some combinations of pattern and gesture, incident and development will make you want to hold the magic forever.

It ends as it must, in the fashion of stories of this nature. Prettily yet in a rambunctious, destructive way, speaking of smashed mirrors, destroyed lives in the name of crippling beliefs, and you don’t really take away anything new in the department of great truths. But the sensory and narrative trips this film will take you on are curdling in their bittersweetness and irony, peppered with moments that are unforgettable.

• Sweet Dreams is directed by Ena Sendijarevic and features a cast headed by Hayati Azis, Hans Dagelet, Rio Kaj Den Haaz, Peter Faber, Elita Gullemot, Muhammad Khan, Wagianti Kinaryo, Bart Klever, Florian Myjer, Chris Nietvelt, Fred Rusdi, Yunita Thim Siong Soenarto, Verdi Solaiman, David Chan Chun Lun Souimine, Renée Soutendijk and, Lisa Zweerman. Written by Ena Sendijarevic, it is produced by Erik Glijnis and Leontine Petit and features creative input by Martial Foe (music), Emo Weemhoff (cinematography), Lot Rossmark (editing), Martha Mojet and Rebecca van Unen (casting), Myrte Beltman (production design) and Bernadette Corstens (costumes). In Dutch and Indonesian with English subtitles, it is part of the 11^th European Film Festival South Africa, screening at The Zone in Rosebank Johannesburg, The Labia in Cape Town and online from 10-20 October 2024.