Those who wish to discover nature do not have to leave the city! Inspired by Dutch filmmakers such as Jorens Ivens and Bert Haanstra, Suzanne van Leendert went looking for a connection with nature, while being in the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands. The result is a poetic, associative and experimental film that focuses, over a period of four seasons, on a stretch of water in the middle of this city. A stretch of water that is less than a mile and a half long but where more is going on than you think...

Filmmaker Suzanne van Leendert focused on her immediate surroundings, a canal in the city of Utrecht, her "backyard" so to speak. A slice of nature in the city that at first sight might seem rather mundane and not all that interesting, with high-rise flats on one side and rows of houses on the other. In one way, it is not unlike any stretch of water in any other city. It is a place you might not pay a lot of attention to unless you stop for a moment and take notice, like the film does.

The film is a collaboration with Anne Broeksma, a poet with the Utrecht’s Guild of Poets, who wrote a poetic voice-over to accompany the images, and Gerwin Weidenaar, a recently-graduated composer and sound designer, who created a sound score in which the boundaries between ambient noise, sound design and music all blend together.

The film not only shows the beauty of nature - such as the glare of the sun bouncing off the water, an unflappable pigeon sitting in a tree during a downpour or a cormorant spreading its wings - but also the 'interaction' between this stretch of water and the residents that surround it.