Het Zuiden

Martje (Monic Hendrickx) is the amiable boss of a laundry. Her staff love her. Apart from the driver, they are all women, who display great solidarity together. When the old driver retires, Loe (Frank Lammers) applies for the job. This truck driver has driven to the South for years, but wants to work for the laundry ‘because Dutch hamburgers and coffee are the best’. Loe and Martje feel an irresistible attraction to each other. It looks as if the inevitable is about to happen when Loe is called into her office. But the flirt turns into a fiasco, because Loe is startled by the fact that Martje has lost a breast to cancer. Martje sees her dream go up in smoke and her female staff, who see Loe storm off, draw their own conclusions. Lies and misunderstandings lead to a dramatic series of events. When an illegal Russian teenager arrives (Oksana Akinshina, known from Lilya 4 Ever), mother of a newborn child, Martje starts caring for the baby.In his gripping, atmospheric and realistically acted and photographed film, Martin Koolhoven sketches in a way reminiscent of the Dardenne Brothers the working relationships and friendships in the laundry with largely immigrant women workers. This helps South into a tragic, intense character study of a woman who becomes entangled in a web of hope and sorrow, reality and fantasy.