Sweet Dreams (2023): Behind the Cinematographic Masterpiece of Ena Sendijarević
Swathed in heavy early 20th-century European gowns, cinched waists, and stifling collars, Sweet Dreams unfolds within lush, painterly backdrops and the constrained 4:3 frame. In her 2023 surrealist period drama, Bosnian-Dutch filmmaker and screenwriter Ena Sendijarević conjures the atmosphere of waning Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia—an era at once decadent and decaying, haunting and hallucinatory.
With the film’s premiere on CinemaWorld, we spoke with Ena about the inspirations behind Sweet Dreams, her distinctive approach to visual storytelling, and what it means to navigate postcolonial memory through film—particularly in a cross-cultural production between Indonesia and the Netherlands. Our conversation follows below.
Q: What was it like working on a film co‑produced by Indonesia and the Netherlands, and with such a diverse cast, how did you foster collaboration on set?
It was a great mix of people and energies. Sometimes when you work only within the borders of your own country, you feel like your world is getting smaller, and it was the opposite with this film. It felt like we were making a new sort of connection between these countries, reflecting on a violent axis of the past, the colonial oppression, but also making something new together. At the same time, there is a universality in the process of filmmaking, so it did feel like business as usual on a filmset, apart from the traveling time.
Q: I was reading up about how much research went into this film, travelling to Indonesia, studying records of all of these events and timelines across history. Since colonialism is experienced so differently from both sides, how did you approach representing these nuanced perspectives of power and legacy?
When I decided to make a film about this topic, I first needed to understand it myself. I wanted to know how colonialism actually comes forward in the way people treat each other, how it poisons intimate dynamics. That’s why I went into research. Of course, colonialism, racism, capitalist exploitation, all that goes beyond the Dutch in Indonesia. But because this is where the story was set, I focused there. I read everything I could and spent months alone in different parts of Indonesia. That time brought up a lot of emotions, and I used those feelings as material to write. Every time I had a new insight, I rewrote. I wanted to keep adjusting it until the script could carry the complexity without getting lost in a myriad of meanings and becoming meaningless.
Q: And how was Sweet Dreams received by international audiences, particularly in the Netherlands and Indonesia?
In the Netherlands, the film was very well received. It won six national film awards and had a large cinema audience. I got a lot of nice reactions. In Indonesia, it didn’t get a theatrical release, but I did hear from many people who saw it at festivals and liked it. But of course, positive feedback always finds you more easily than criticism.
Q: From aspect ratio, colour scheme to sound design, the creative choices behind Sweet Dreams are striking and form the core of the film’s apparent absurdity. Why did you choose to tell a story about colonialism this way? And are there any creative choices that you hope viewers would look into more closely?
I wanted to underline the absurdity of these oppressive dynamics. I feel like injustice often feels absurd in the moment itself, feelings like sadness or rage sometimes come later. This approach also made it easier for the audience to identify with the characters. I didn’t want to make a distanced period piece about good guys and bad guys. That would’ve made it too easy for the audience to say: these people in that time, that's not me or my world. I used form to bring the world into the here and now, something contemporary.
Q: The ironies and parallels throughout the film are very interesting. The fields and jungle suggest freedom in open spaces but it can also feel primitive especially when it becomes a hunting ground. On the other hand, domestic spaces which typically have greater order highlight dysfunction. Were these paradoxes/parallels part of your original vision to comment on colonial power?
Yes, we always worked with three main spaces: the house, the outside land, and the jungle. The house was the center of colonial power and for us it represented Western Europe. The furniture is European, everything is straight lines and under control, like the Dutch landscape. Then there’s the outside, the plantation, which is still under human control. And finally, the jungle. We wanted these spaces to feel like they were observing the people inside them. The jungle had to feel like it was watching. The house had to feel rigid, dry. That contrast was important.
Q: There were also several motifs that pointed at human corporeality—distorted faces, decomposition and death—which, to me, evoked a subtle sense of horror. Were these elements something you were consciously exploring, and if so, what role did they play in shaping the atmosphere or themes of the film?
The idea of decay was there from the beginning. It wasn’t yet the end of Dutch colonialism in Indonesia, that would come about 50 years later, but the shift had already started. A lot of this came through literature, from both Dutch and Indonesian writers. Public thinking was beginning to change. I wanted to catch that feeling, that something is rotting, something is no longer holding. A decaying corpse, insects, bad smells... that was part of the atmosphere I was trying to create.
Q: In previous interviews, you mentioned that Sweet Dreams focuses on an ensemble of characters rather than centering a single protagonist. Given that stories about Dutch colonialism in Indonesia often lean toward clichéd portrayals of the colonised, why was it important for you to approach this film through multiple perspectives instead?
Cinema often struggles to show people as fully human. It sometimes puts the oppressed on a pedestal, turning them into desexualised saints, making them one dimensional. I wanted to avoid that. I wanted to show a group of people who are all stuck in different positions in the same toxic system, trying to deal with it, without even realizing how much it’s poisoning them, making loving relations impossible. My aim was to show them in their full humanity: their contradictions, their sexuality. Not to ignore the injustice and imbalance between them, but not to flatten them either.
Q: One of my favourite moments in the film is the little debate Agathe has about whether seeing and hearing someone affects how we feel about their absence or presence. She says, “If you can hear someone but not see them, doesn’t that just increase the distance?” It’s such an intriguing line and I was curious what your take on it is, and what it means to you in the context of the film.
At the time this story takes place, the Industrial Revolution was happening and new technologies were changing how people experienced distance, things like the telephone, the train, the airplane. As a millennial, I’ve lived through a similar kind of shift with the digital revolution: the internet, mobile phones. I wrote the script during COVID, when we were constantly on Zoom but had no real physical closeness. That line came out of all that. I wanted to play with the question: what does closeness really mean, can innovations really bridge distances?
Q: There’s another striking line towards the end of the film: “We have to let go of the things that don’t work to continue with the things that do—that’s what progress looks like, and what facing the future looks like.”
I read this as a meditation on the role of history—how it shapes our lives and whether we should move on from parts of the past that no longer serve us. Yet, this period piece is itself a revisiting of history—albeit in satire—and serves as a meta-commentary. With that in mind, how do you hope audiences will engage with this tension after watching the film?
Not all the dialogue in the film reflects my personal views, sometimes the opposite. In that moment, I wanted to reflect on this idea of progress. Why are we always expected to discard and reinvent? Why can’t we repeat the things that work? It’s a bit ironic that Josephine says this right after Siti has lost someone close to her, in a system that’s brutal and unjust. The idea of progress constantly pushes us to reinvent ourselves and frames it as a human need, but is it? At the same time, in life, sometimes you do need to let go of things and embrace something new. So, I wanted to play with this tension in that piece of dialogue.
Q: I see that you are currently working on your next film The Possessed, which also explores female agency, power and happens to be set in a historical context as is Sweet Dreams. What inspires your choice of themes and settings?
New ideas come to me all the time, but only a few really stick. Often, a new film is a reaction to the one before. That’s definitely true for The Possessed, it came out of the things I couldn’t fit into Sweet Dreams. After finishing a project, I’m usually left with fragments that don’t belong in that world but still feel like they need to be expressed. Those fragments become the starting point for something else.
Q: Finally, considering that Sweet Dreams is a satirical period piece, do you have a personal favourite in that genre—or a film you return to for inspiration?
There was a point while writing this film where I felt stuck. I thought maybe I should give up on the project. I started watching films, hoping something would inspire me, but nothing did. Then I stumbled across The Cremator by Juraj Herz, a horror satire about the rise of fascism in Czechoslovakia. Seeing such a serious subject turned inside out, with humor, with visual playfulness, was a relief. It showed me that you can approach real life horror through absurdity and playfulness and still be deadly serious. It helped me move forward.
Watch Sweet Dreams now on CinemaWorld and CinemaWorld On Demand.
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