Product Description

Sacha Polak's debut feature is a frank and explicit look at carnal desire that is told from a distinctly female perspective. She paints an erotically charged portrait of a woman whose casual sexual encounters mask a loneliness and a craving for intimacy. Hemel (Hannah Hoekstra) is a young woman who drifts through a series of anonymous one-night stands and seems only close to her father. When he finds himself a girlfriend, Hemel's jealousy puts her on the emotional edge. An emotionally and physically raw study of sexuality that is nothing less than mesmerizing.

Review

"Beautifully lensed look at the moment just before a daughter has to let go of her father should travel extensively and turn Polak into a name to watch." --Variety

"Lust, love, and need prove a tangled knot inside the heart of one young woman in Hemel, Sacha Polak's alluring character study of a beautiful Dutch twentysomething driven to fill an emotional void with casual one-night stands...Hoekstra's stunning, star-making performance, which, in one striking close-up after another, sharply captures the fear and pain of having to let go and grow up." --Slant Magazine

"Hemel stars Hannah Hoekstra as the title character, a young woman somewhere in her mid-twenties. What we come to the impression that Hemel is that she is searching for something; be it love or be it lust there s emptiness inside her, a part of her devoid of the emotional fulfillment she wants. To fill this, she tries sleeping around and having a few one night stands. This is all very casual to her, she thinks nothing of sleeping with someone she just met and has no problem chit chatting with him afterwards or even letting him shave off all of her pubic hair. As one encounter leads into the next, we have to start to wonder how and why she's so nonchalant about all of this. She very obviously enjoys sex and the pleasure that it brings her but seems resistant to actually making any sort of connection to her partners beyond the physical...this film is quite well made, occasionally surprising, and very worthwhile." --Rock! Shock! Pop!