The Pointsman

A woman gets off a train by mistake and finds herself at a deserted station with nobody around. The only person living there is the pointsman, and he does not speak her language. A strange closeness builds between them through looks, gestures and distance rather than words, and the film follows the relationship across a full turn of the seasons with almost no dialogue at all. Jos Stelling adapted Jean-Paul Franssens’ 1982 book and shot in Scotland over an entire year, so that the colour and the air of all four seasons would be in the same film. Jim van der Woude and Stéphane Excoffier take the leads. It won two Golden Calves at the Netherlands Film Festival. A film that uses its silence and its slowness on purpose.