15/11/2024 - Stijn Bouma delivers a poignant and highly engaged first fiction film about the scandalous oppression of a woman of Turkish origin by the Dutch authorities

"Don’t let them get you down". A dramatic, Kafkaesque story which is, regrettably, based on real events forms the focus of Dutch filmmaker Stijn Bouma’s first fiction feature, the shattering and merciless movie The Hunt for Meral O. [+see also:
interview: Stijn Bouma
film profile], which is nominated in the Best Film and Best Director categories at the 2024 Golden Calves (the Netherlands’ major annual film awards) and has now screened in competition at the 25th Arras Film Festival.

"I’ve received a payment order, but I’ve already appealed against it twice.” – “I can’t see any record of your appeal.” – “I’ve got proof my letter was received.” – “I can’t see it on our system. Anything else I can help with? I need to end this call now." The situation faced by Meral (the remarkable Dilan Yurdakul), a divorcee of Turkish origin with two children to care for, is challenging, to say the least: the tax authorities are demanding 34,256 euros from her, because, as an intertitle opening the film points out, "in 2009, in the Netherlands, certain parents were accused of child benefit fraud (often without proof). An overwhelming majority of these parents had immigrant backgrounds. All the money received had to be reimbursed with no consideration for the devastating impact it might have on these people’s lives." Ultimately, Meral slowly realises that if her appeal isn’t on the system, it’s because the system clearly wants nothing to do with her.

With each new step in the administrative process, from the attachment of earnings order which forces her to leave her job as a home help for elderly people and to become a cleaner in industrial buildings ("HR think it’s dangerous to put the fox in charge of the henhouse: you’re going into vulnerable people’s homes” – “Do you know how humiliating this is?” – “I can’t do anything about it, I’ve got orders from above") to intrusive investigations by social services (tails, photographs, a search of her home, social media surveillance) on suspicion of undeclared income (which people indebted to the tax system are obliged to report); from blocking her demands for urgent aid to the school and, by proxy, child protection services worrying about the wellbeing of Meral’s two daughters, the noose gradually tightens around the neck of this young woman, who is drowning in a deep sense of injustice masked by a desire to save face despite extreme financial precariousness (electricity cuts, getting by on 300 euros a month, second-hand clothes and no clubs for the children, etc.). Will Meral end up cracking, or will a miraculous window open up before her?

Shot with steely meticulousness and subtly playing with the out-of-frame space, the film primarily follows its resilient protagonist as she slowly succumbs to despair. But there’s also a social services inspector (Gijs Naber) who acts as a counterpart and who’s having doubts over his assignment, but who’s answerable to a totalitarian hierarchy ("fraud is one of the biggest dangers for our society and once again, it’s foreigners who are guilty of it", "rules are rules"). Naturally highly engaged, this edifying tale about the administrative machine (whose screenplay was penned by the director and Roelof Jan Minneboo) is undeniably chilling, and our empathy for the main character boundless. Some viewers might find the approach too Manichean, but the reality is, it took 12 years for these cases to be cleared up in the Netherlands, which resulted in the demise of a government, given that close to 120,000 parents and children had been affected by this scandal.

The Hunt for Meral O. was produced by KeplerFilm in co-production with Evangelische Omroep (EO).

(Translated from French)