Rotterdam 2025 Review: THREE DAYS OF FISH Proves You Can Never Go Home Again

Peter Hoogendoorn debuted very strongly almost ten years ago with Tussen 10 en 12 (Between 10 and 12), a rigidly structured movie set in a limited time-space. In it, a family one by one get told bad news by two police officers, and go on a sort-of road movie to inform the rest of the family. His new film Three Days of Fish (original title is Drie Dagen Vis) has three of the same central elements: the threat of bad news hanging over the head of the protagonist; a limited time-frame (three days in this case); and a road-movie deconstruction, as this new one is sort of a road movie without them ever really hitting the road properly.

Still, Three Days of Fish couldn't be more different. It is less rigidly structured. Even if the title implies there will be three days, and three dinners of fish, we will not see every one of those dinners being eaten at length and the days are deliberately not clearly delineated. They blur into each other. The focus is also less dramatic, focussing on a droll sense of humor in two protagonists who are blunt and socially awkward. The drama is mostly in things unspoken, instead of the drama of Between 10 and 12, which was all about the spoken truth hitting hard. And while Between 10 and 12 was filmed with very deliberate camera movements and in color, Three Days of Fish is looser and in Black and White.

Three Days of Fish is about a father and son. Gerri and his son Dick have not had the best of relationships. Gerri is living abroad, while Dick is getting by on the skin of his teeth, only because of the support of his new girlfriend and his many side-hustles to make money. Like selling second hand junk for higher prices. Now that Gerri is back in The Netherlands for a week, he needs to break the news to Dick that this might be his very final visit, as he is planning to permanently move to another country while he isn't in the best of health. Most of the film hangs on this dynamic: how does the relationship change when one person wants to finalize a plan that the other was vehemently against from the beginning? And how does that dynamic play out when you have one character who talks a lot but says nothing of importance, like Dick, and one character who talks rarely and says even less, like Gerri?

Gerri isn't the most talkative person, and he expresses himself with idioms, placeholder words and local colloquialisms. You know the old disproven chestnut that in Inuit languages there are about fifty words for snow? Three Days Fish proves that there are at least 20 words and phrases in Dutch that translate in English to "Oh, well..."

Some of the regional humor in Three Days of Fish may be lost in translation, as most of the jokes depend on a certain sass that plays around with a very particular use of dry wit that is local to Rotterdam, where it was filmed. This is why it was more than fitting that the film premièred at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where the audience ate it up. But even when you are not locked into the local jokes, there is a lot in the film to admire. The heart and soul of the film is in the idea that once you leave a place, it is hard to stay connected to that place, even if you still have family there. And that trying to connect to the past and revisiting your memories is a similar case.

An American friend told me that there is an idiom for that in America: "You can't go home again". The idea that the past is a locked-off place, in some ways is underlined with several scenes late in the film, one of which makes this theme very literal. But there are so many subtle and overt scenes in this film about the disconnect between past and present; different people; different cultures. Three Days of Fish dives deeply in the discomfort of miscommunication. It is a film about how sometimes we are our own worst enemies when it comes to connecting to other people. It builds up to an apotheosis where the discomfort gets so extreme, it scans as both dryly hilarious and gut wrenchingly sad, while it is also still subtle as an end scene. Because it is a scene about the roads not taken, the things unsaid, the gestures unmade. The past is a place you can never visit again but as Three Days of Fish seems to suggest, don't make the mistake of fucking up your present by the same inactiveness.

Three Days of Fish ended in the second place for the Audience Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. The film is currently touring the festival circuit.