Still: January - Jetske Lieber

In the short film January, selected for Future Frames at Karlovy Vary, we don’t know at first exactly what Willem’s problem is. His behaviour is very sporadic and he’s acting very strangely in company. Is he suffering from acute mental health issues? Is he congenitally anti-social?

Actually, it’s none of these. He is lovesick. And for Willem, being lovesick is like having a disability, as it can be for all of us (including director Jetske Lieber).

Over the course of the titular month of January, we observe his interactions with the rest of humanity, at birthday parties, during climate activist self-defence training, dealing with parents, having unsatisfying sex during a one-night stand, even bumping into his ex while wearing his ex’s jumper.

But the heart can be a robust organ, and January is long enough a month for it to begin to mend, albeit slowly, one sad day at a time…

January is Dutch director Jetske Lieber’s graduation film, which they wrote with fellow graduate Jim Sluis. The pair were determined to create a film about contemporary life in Amsterdam, “something really 2024, and very recognisable for ourselves,” Lieber tells SEE NL.

What was imperative for the director was that the film was built on a series of key foundation scenes. Such as the one with the jumper and the ex, or when Willem hangs around a group of friends who are smoking like crazy while he abstains, or as he remains mute and disoriented as those same friends bang on unselfconsciously about modern stuff. (XR is a mainly white movement, they maintain, while a standing joke is how libido is increased through activism training).

So it’s Willem’s mum who provides much needed solace, even when he takes her to an exhibition of paintings depicting vaginas in various forms of repose. His flatmates are also sympathetic. For the first half of the film he has been highly irritable with them, but they patiently wait for him to return to being the Willem they knew previously. And that can only happen after he bumps into his ex on the street, at which point he begins to see the world more clearly again…

 “I was very heartbroken at the time I made this film,” director Lieber concedes, although they don’t agree it is a ‘heartbreak’ movie. “It's more about identity and about becoming yourself again without someone else,” they say. “But yes, you're useless when you're heartbroken. And I really like the idea of everyone around Willem knowing everything about themselves within the world while he's just very numb.”

 Willem is played beautifully by Dutch actor Bram Flick.

“I really loved working with Bram, he is such a great physical actor. The whole thing about the character of Willem is that he has this really long, awkward, clumsy body. He wants to disappear in the social events, but he simply can't because he's so tall,” says Lieber.

The director was also more than happy to apply the actors’ suggestions of more naturalistic dialogue, even if this meant the sound operator was driven to distraction when characters overlapped and interrupted each other, as what happens in real conversations.

 Lieber would love to one day adapt the short to feature-length, although the frenetic pace would have to be slowed right down, they say.

Since making January, the director has made another short called Anna’s Freezer through the Dutch De Ontmoeting programme, about a lonely young woman who takes her frustrations out on a freezer as she is cleaning it out. Next up is another short film, called A Mother Visits, about a mum who moves into a student house to look after her daughter who has injured her knee.

Returning to their film January, does Lieber think it’s really possible to get over heartbreak in a month? “No, definitely not,” they underline. And even if you did, what’s the point, given that there’s a miserable February you then have to get through, they agree.

Find out more about Karlovy Vary here.