Dion
2020 · 12m
Directed by Harvey Kadijk
Genres: drama
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
A suffocating grip of PTSD and unheard trauma, told with back-and-forth narration that gives due weight to a survivor's haunting fear.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The dual-narrator structure promises subversion but lands in well-trodden trauma-cinema territory—it's formally aware enough to avoid pure catharsis, yet still too reverent toward its own pain to actually interrogate it.
Kadijk's counterpoint narration recalls the precision of essay films like *The Death of Louis XIV*, using voice as a compositional tool rather than exposition—this is the kind of considered formal choice that situates the work within a lineage of rigorous, unsentimental portraiture.
The back-and-forth narration could've been clumsy, but there's a specific rhythmic decision here—the way voices interrupt, overlap, and drift out of sync—that transforms PTSD abstraction into something you can *feel* in real time.
Reviews
Kadijk's Dion is a gut-wrenching and a discomforting experience, but beyond that, it's also the kind that evokes a deep sense of empathy for the countless still suffering from the shadows of a past that they had no control over. Highly recommended!