Lowlands (2009)

Lowlands examines the precariousness of home and artistic life during wartime. It centers on Catharina Bolnes, the wife and widow of 17th-century painter Johannes Vermeer in Delft. The film follows her fight to keep her family afloat during the France-Netherlands War (1672-1675), and her declaration of bankruptcy after Vermeer's death leaves her with no income and ten young children. The film draws on diverse materials, including Vermeer paintings of Catharina, etchings illustrating Louis XIV’s wartime sexual violence, reenactments of legal testimonies by the Vermeer family concerning domestic abuse, forged paintings, and bankruptcy; archival black-and-white footage of Delft during WWII; contemporary color footage charting Louis XIV’s army's advance near Delft in 1672; and a 1996 testimony from a perpetrator of wartime sexual violence at the Hague Criminal Tribunal.