FIN

"Fin" unfolds with the quiet ache of memory — a short, tender film that carries the weight of a lifetime’s worth of emotion in just eight minutes. It’s less a story than a remembrance — a cinematic whisper suspended between life and death, where grief and love blend into something wordless, almost sacred. Lieke Bezemer captures that fragile moment when youth collides with mortality, when the world refuses to stop for your pain, and you’re left clutching the remnants of a friendship that once felt indestructible.

At its heart lies Sam, a 17-year-old boy caught between guilt and longing after the sudden loss of his best friend, Fin. What Bezemer does so beautifully is refuse to dramatize grief — instead, she lets it breathe. The film doesn’t rush to explain what happened or offer catharsis. It lingers in the silence, in the hesitant movements of a boy trying to make sense of absence. The lake — that shared, sacred space between them — becomes a portal of sorts, not to the supernatural, but to memory itself. In revisiting the place where laughter once lived, Sam finds the echoes of Fin still there, still alive in the rustle of leaves and the shimmer of water.

What’s striking is how the film visualizes the unspoken — the unfinished conversations, the if onlys, the quiet rituals we create to stay connected with those we’ve lost. Bezemer’s direction has the sensitivity of someone who has felt grief’s disorienting pull firsthand. The camera never intrudes; it observes, respectfully, as if aware of the sanctity of what it’s witnessing. The tone is deeply personal yet universal — the kind of loss that rewrites how you see the world, how you carry yourself through it.

And though "Fin" is born of pain, it is not a film about death. It’s about continuation — the way friendships extend beyond their physical end, the way love, when it’s real, resists finality. By grounding the story in adolescence, Bezemer taps into something deeply pure: the kind of bond that defines who you are before the world teaches you how to hide it. There’s an authenticity to the portrayal of teenage friendship here — that unguarded closeness, that intensity, that belief that your best friend is the world..

Every frame feels like a shared heartbeat between the filmmakers and their subjects — a film made not just for someone, but with them, in spirit. The result is intimate, unpolished in the best possible way, and alive with emotion that feels unfiltered and true. You sense this film was made out of necessity — that it wasn’t just a creative act, but a means of survival.

In the end, "Fin" isn’t asking us to move on; it’s asking us to remember. To honour the people who shaped us, to let grief coexist with love, and to understand that remembrance is its own form of continuation. It’s a quiet film, yes — but its silence speaks louder than most films ever dare.