Still: Melk by Stefanie Kolk

Melk, directed by Stefanie Kolk, is a complex and quite wonderful film. It is also a rarity in that it squarely addresses one of the female body’s most natural processes, the production of breast milk, even if that process is rendered redundant by the stillbirth of a child. And that is what makes the director’s debut feature somewhat audacious as well.

In the film, after her baby is stillborn, Robin’s breasts continue to produce milk, but the thought of discarding the milk that she expresses is deeply upsetting and intensifies her sense of grief. And so, despite many hurdles put in her way, she decides to donate her milk, a decision which brings its own emotional complications…as well as a very crowded freezer.

The film stars the major Dutch talent Frieda Barnhard, whom Stefanie Kolk brilliantly directed in the short film Eyes on the Road (Locarno, 2019) and who sparkled like a comet in Zara Dwinger’s Kiddo (Berlinale, 2023).

The idea for the film came to Kolk after she had to leave her one-year-old at home in order to attend a film festival in London. This seemed a good moment to quit breast-feeding and the attendant pumping. As successful as this turned out to be, she still found the experience unsettling.

“As I wandered the streets of London my older sister came to mind. Many years ago, she’d had to cut back on her milk after the stillbirth of her firstborn baby,” Kolk recalls. “I felt there was an element to her loss that I hadn’t given due thought to before: the milk. I wondered: what if she, or someone in her situation, wouldn’t stop pumping, but continued instead? I became fascinated with this idea, and decided to look if I could find any women who took this path.”

“I wanted to give Robin the same kind of power that I felt in these women,” the director adds of the film’s heroine, remembering the response of a woman she encountered during her research, how the thought that her milk wouldn’t be of any use at all was unbearable. “That really touched me. Donating, for her, was very simply the only option. That calm clarity of thought, and the act of following a feeling like that, struck me as brave.”

The decision to cast Frieda Barnhard was easy, Kolk underlines. “Not just for me, but for everyone involved at the time. I see Robin as a kind of quiet rebel, someone who carves out her own path in dealing with the loss of her baby. Frieda has both a lightness and a darkness to her presence, she can handle silent moments with dignity and dialogue with wit. I felt these things were directly appropriate for the role, and that Frieda didn’t need to tone them down.”

In creating the character of Jonas, Robin’s partner, Kolk remembered the support she observed (and was surprised by) as she researched her film. “I met a man who was just deeply proud of his wife for having produced and donated so much milk. As we spoke, just the memory of the amount of milk still touched him. I felt it would be stupid to make Jonas into an antagonist, after meeting this guy. But of course, for him, there was also an inherent tension in his wife’s mission. Because, how long do you continue? And how, as a partner, do you broach that subject? You, too, are grieving the loss of the pregnancy and baby, but the loss is not physical in the same way it is for the birthing partner.”
 
Melk is written by Stefanie Kolk and Nena van Driel and is produced by Lemming Film. The film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund and the Netherlands Production Incentive. International sales are handled by Bendita Film Sales.