The Arrival of Joachim Stiller

The film is set in Antwerp. At the centre of the account is a journalist. His daily life begins to come apart. Things happen that cannot be explained. A letter dated 1919 comes into his hands. The letter is genuine and very old. But it speaks of an event much later than that. All these oddities tie back to one name. The name is Joachim Stiller. The journalist goes after that name. The obsession keeps growing. The root of the matter goes back to the war years. The man goes to a psychiatrist. Then to an abandoned railway station. Hugo Metsers and Cox Habbema take the leads in Harry Kümel’s Belgian and Dutch coproduction of 1976.