De Oost

The East is a 2020 Dutch war film directed by . Plot The film is set in the Dutch East Indies of 1946 during the Indonesian National Revolution. Twenty-year-old soldier Johan de Vries from Arcen is sent to Semarang, where the Dutch army says it is to liberate the Indonesian people from the authority of Sukarno. Johan believes in the promise to help the population, but soon discovers that the reality is different: he notices that the population is hostile to the Dutch army and that his colleagues in turn hardly act against war crimes. For example, the army takes no action when the chiefs of a nearby village are found beheaded. Johan's fellow soldiers are instead more concerned with visiting local brothels and refer to the population as 'monkeys'. After three months, during a patrol, the corps is suddenly attacked by Indonesian guerrillas, in which soldier Werner is killed. Army captain Raymond Westerling, who leads counter-guerrilla actions and purges against the Indonesian revolutionaries, tracks down the man who shot Werner and involves Johan in torturing the man. Johan then accompanies Westerling on a perilous journey deep into enemy territory to take out guerrilla fighters, making his first victim in the process. Westerling admits Johan to his secret mission and carries out various assignments. Not much later, Johan is promoted to corporal. He hardens and the corps becomes increasingly alienated from him: his comrade Mattias Cohen is startled when Johan shoots a guerrilla fighter in cold blood. Meanwhile, rumors are spread about Johan's family in the camp. He told the soldiers himself that his entire family had died, but in reality his father is serving a prison sentence in Vught because he was a prominent member of the National Socialist Movement during World War II who was responsible for the deaths of more than a thousand Jews.