Review by Suzie Toumeh
Trigger Warnings (from Reviewer)
Depictions of a dead body, themes of suicide and profound grief.
Age Recommendation (from Reviewer)
16+
✅ Reviewer recommends it for…
Thinkers, theory lovers, and anyone willing to move at a slow, observant tempo.
📖 Plot Summary
The film "Hemelsleutel" is an experimental, semi-autobiographical exploration of grief, connection, and the creative process. It follows a voiceover by the director writing about Lea, a middle-aged woman, as she navigates her past and present while attempting to photograph the Dutch landscape from its highest point. Through this meta-narrative voiceover, Lea reflects on her life, including a forbidden connection with a married man, and the unresolved grief over a childhood friend's tragic fate. The film is filled with lingering, beautiful shots of landscapes and industrial areas, intentionally slow pacing, and philosophical musings on "space and time." As Lea ascends to the highest crane in Europe, she comes to understand that her journey has always been about connecting and letting go. The film ends with a sweeping aerial shot of the crane and sky, symbolizing her emotional release and newfound perspective.
📖 In This Review
Have you ever had a memory so painful your mind simply… filed it away? We all have those boxes on the highest shelves of our consciousness, labeled “open later.” Hemelsleutel (Heavenly Key) by Dutch master Digna Sinke is a profound exploration of what happens when the right key, often carried by a stranger, finally unlocks one. This film is a playground for theory lovers, a brilliant meta-narrative about grief.
“The film shows us, in the most beautiful and heartbreaking way, that our minds protect us by burying our deepest pains until we are strong enough to face them.”
We meet Lea through the director’s own voiceover. At her core, she is a woman using her camera to document the changing world from a safe, aesthetic remove. Lea finds a body while walking the industrial area of Amsterdam. In photographing him, this stranger’s death becomes the “heavenly key.” It unlocks her grief, shaking loose the memory of a childhood friend whose life ended in suicide. She continues her original quest: to find the highest vantage point in the area to take a photo where she can literally see the whole picture. For this, she gets help from Jakob, with whom she shares a fleeting, ethically ambiguous romance that ends when she finds out he is a married man. She arrives at the top of the highest crane in Europe, with the world literally laid out beneath her. And there, in that vast, quiet space, she arrives at clarity. She understands the pattern that was always there: everything is about connecting and letting go.
Digna Sinke’s most radical directorial choice is her voiceover. From the first frame, she narrates, telling us she is writing a script, inventing Lea. This meta-layer is the film’s emotional architecture. By blending herself with her character that we never see, Sinke dissolves the wall between artist and artifact. She directs us to understand that this story of processing grief is inseparable from the creative act itself, that writing, filming, and remembering are all ways of climbing that crane to get a clearer view.
The cinematography during Lea’s walks through the industrial area are patient and grounded, with static or slowly panning shots of concrete, steel, water, and sky. The editing doesn’t cut to a beat, but to a breath. Shots linger, allowing us to observe the textures of the landscape just as Lea does. The sensation is one of deliberate, almost meditative walking. It made me lean in and slow my own breathing, syncing with the film’s tempo. This visual rhythm is the method. It builds the contemplative space where a sudden, stark image, like the body, can land with force.
Even a scene with the giant blue statues of the kissing couple (on the edge of the IJ waterway in the west port area of Amsterdam) dwarfs the living individual standing between them who asks Lea to photograph him. In the frame, humans who are not known to Lea are constantly small beings navigating colossal landscapes.The score is minimalist, a few sparse, moments of music playing in another room, some atmospheric tones, and a recurring, gentle motif, a kind of nice, slow music that feels both nostalgic and deliberately repeated. It lingers like a half-remembered tune over and over throughout the film, reinforcing the film's fragile, introspective tone. Alongside it, every whispered voiceover confession feels intimate. The sound design leaves you with the visceral feeling of being very alone with your thoughts. It makes the final view atop the crane feel earned and sacred.
In an era of fast edits and frantic storytelling, Hemelsleutel cares deeply about the value of slowness. It argues that some pains cannot be rushed, and some clarity can only be found by ascending above the noise to look at the whole picture of your life. It cares for the idea that healing is a pattern of connection and release we must discover for ourselves.
So what is the gift of this film? It gives us a cinematic language for our own locked boxes. It teaches that the key might come from an unexpected, even tragic, place. And it offers, in its sublime final moments, a visual prayer for letting go, releasing the pain while keeping the love. It’s a reminder that sometimes, you have to climb to your own highest crane to understand the landscape of your soul.
Reviewer: Suzie Toumeh
Suzie holds two Master’s degrees: in Media Studies from Utrecht University and English Studies from the University of Szeged. She has served on two film festival juries, including the prestigious European University Film Award.💡 Want More Deep Dives on Film & Art?
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