There are some feelings that have to be experienced firsthand to fully understand. For me, a core memory from my early childhood was travelling with my family from our home in the big city, driving for hours until we reached the beach, where I spent days covered in saltwater and sand, relishing in the heat from the sun overhead. Those were some of the happiest days of my life, and the lingering memories are almost impossible to put into words. There are many instances where we experience something that can only be present in our soul – but this hasn’t stopped some ambitious filmmakers from attempting to replicate certain emotions and sensations. A wonderful recent example – and one that ties directly into my anecdote – is September Afternoon, the first feature film directed by Nicolaas Schmidt, who sets out to evoke those precise emotions we’re discussing by crafting what can only be described as a stunning exercise in endurance, in one of the year’s most challenging and fascinating directorial debuts. The film takes place in an undisclosed part of what appears to be Western Europe, and follows a family (all of whom remain unnamed) as they spend an afternoon on the beach. This is the extent of the premise, and regardless of how hard one tries, it’s impossible to find any more plot than this very brief description, which is the precise quality that immediately establishes it as an essential and daring work of contemporary experimental cinema. The director’s roots in visual art are very much present throughout this film, which seeks to answer some incredibly challenging questions about the nature of not only cinema, but humanity as a whole, starting with an exceptionally simple premise and then gradually and methodically unseating our understanding of these themes through a sharp, provocative drama that intentionally bewilders in a way that is nothing if not absolutely admirable, being as challenging as it is hopelessly beautiful.

In most cases, story dictates form when it comes to the majority of films, since with the exception of a few more abstract endeavours, you cannot design something if you don’t have at least some idea of where it intends to go, or at least a slight amount of plot. However, September Afternoon is a terrific example of a film that began as more of an obscure idea, with the story being formed in the process of making the film, every choice being a response to the very clear desire to redefine what the medium could express, visually and aurally. Starting at its foundation, September Afternoon is a film that is presented without any dialogue – the only audible words we hear are not spoken but rather sung, in the tacky advertisement that acts as the prologue of the film, a gloriously gaudy commercial plucked from the 1980s that, when contrasted with the scenes that are still to come, creates a wonderfully unsettling dynamic, a sharp and vigorous contradiction. Not to be outdone by his own refusal to include any dialogue at all (which prevents us from actually knowing anything about these character, at least at the outset), Schmidt also chooses to make the film exceptionally slow, an intentional choice that seems like an effort to separate viewers who are able to be patient enough to sit with the story, and those who find the idea of watching characters engage in the most banal, ordinary activities imaginable: packing a bag, walking on the beach, building a tent, or any of the other moments that are stretched much longer than they would’ve been in a more conventional film. In September Afternoon, the moments that would traditionally be inconsequential transitions between bigger sequences become the entirety of the plot, forcing the audience (or at least those who are willing to sit in the intentional discomfort of the film) to pay attention to every small detail, since there is eventually a reward as the film progresses; it just takes an abundance of endurance to get to that particular point.

When glancing at the various discussions and pieces written about September Afternoon, there is a fascinating detail we begin to notice: nearly every writer (myself included) either begins the conversation recalling our own recollections of the kind of lazy summer represented by this film, or mentions it in some capacity. This is not surprising when we consider that this seems to be the entire purpose of the film: to touch on a shared sense of memory – and this is where we find the closest approximation to a plot, or at least something that resembles a deeper narrative intention. Memory is primarily what the director is exploring here, trying to evoke a sense of familiarity in every viewer through the process of stretching time in creative and invigorating ways. At first, it seems like we’re just observing a family enjoying their day at the beach, but gradually we begin to see that the director is more interested in recreating the strange way these experiences exist within our minds, where we fixate on certain vivid details while others disappear entirely. It’s a film that lingers on otherwise meaningless moments that make it a profoundly moving exploration of the psychology of these characters. It’s a deeply personal film, but in that rare way that it doesn’t feel like the director is only exploring his own perspective, but allowing the viewer to draw on our memories and recollections, bringing that to a relatively ambiguous story. There is a quiet nostalgia that guides this film, but rather than being for a specific event, it is more about the yearning for a specific feeling, the sensation of spending those long, seemingly endless days in pure bliss, desperately trying to avoid facing the reality that exists on the other side of those perfect days. Schmidt’s greatest achievement is being able to find a cinematic language capable of capturing these feelings without resorting to sentimentality (although, to be fair, it can be a challenge to manipulate an audience without any dialogue), and through stripping away spoken language and conventional narrative, he is forced to find new dramatic devices, leaving behind something that appeals to us on a much more primal, honest level.

September Afternoon is an extraordinarily difficult film to write about, since once we move past acknowledging the form of the film (which is the only aspect that lends itself to easy description), there’s very little to actually grasp onto – it’s almost entirely without plot, and it becomes less about what the film is trying to say, and more about its process of attempting to redefine what the medium can express by dismantling absolutely every preconceived notion of structure, style and story. This is a film that most certainly demands patience, and it is never going to be widely appealing, since the idea of spending 70 minutes watching nameless characters engage in banal activities may be bewildering to certain viewers – but they’re not the target audience, since this film is instead pitched at those who primarily have an interest in art that challenges rather than entertains, and who are intrigued by the idea of exploring the inner depths of the human mind in a decidedly unconventional way. For any viewer willing to give themselves over to the peculiar rhythms that guide this film, September Afternoon provides something truly extraordinary: the opportunity to explore the world in a very different way, where a seemingly ordinary day is redefined into something much deeper, where every fleeting detail and moment of banality has a profound meaning. It is the closest we’re likely to come to a film reaching into our minds and extracting those dormant memories of the past, recreating them in a way that is remarkably close to the sensation we get from being trapped in an endless dream. There’s something so deeply moving about a film that understands the most powerful stories are those which draw on existing experiences, and throughout September Afternoon, we find a film that is built around a simple premise: the sensation of recalling those days when we were simply happy to be alive, surrounded by beauty and with nowhere else to be.