Independent Dutch director Suzanne Raes’ documentary, Where Dragons Live, revolves around Harriet and her siblings, who, following their mother’s death, begin preparing their stately childhood home, Cumnor Place in Oxfordshire, for sale. Sorting through the house that has become cluttered with forgotten and once-important belongings, stir memories of their childhood. Meanwhile, their own children look on.
Raes‘ filmography is an eclectic mix of subjects that defies categorization, which includes In The Houses of Hristina (De huizen van Hristina), about an illegal Bulgarian migrant in Amsterdam. and the story of the Kakiemon family, creators of the famous Kakiemon porcelain, in her 2012 documentary, The Successor of Kakiemon. In 2023, she directed Close to Vermeer (Dicht bij Vermeer), an intimate study of the 17th century Dutch painter.
Speaking to Movies We Texted About, Raes discussed merging the mythical dragon with human emotions, her doubts about the future of this type of documentary filmmaking, witnessing the current political and cultural turmoil, and what types of stories we should be telling children nowadays.
The Interview with Suzanne Raes on Where Dragons Live
[Editor’s Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.]
Paul Risker: Why filmmaking as a means of creative expression? Was there an inspirational or defining moment for you personally?
Suzanne Raes: I come from a non-visual background. When I grew up it was all about music and books — I had no idea that there was something like filmmaking. So, I wanted to be a journalist, but randomly, I was not selected for the School of Journalism. Then I started studying history and, because all historians were unemployed at that time, I thought it would be good to do an internship. I became an intern on an intellectual talk show that featured books, writers, and politics.
The producer was a filmmaker, and I fell in love with her a bit. She was working seven days a week on all these great projects, and so, I asked her, “Apart from doing the talk show producing thing, can I join you?” She took me on, and I worked for her for 10 years. There was a brief period when I went to New York to do some basic video skills training, and when I came back, I was twenty-six, and I got the chance to direct some human-interest TV series.
So, I came from a background of research and producing and then, when I was thirty, I became an independent filmmaker — it was a long road.
I have broad interests, and I don’t think you can immediately recognize my films. I dive into a world I don’t know and that’s what I love doing most. I make music documentaries, and documentaries about sports, politics, and all kinds of things.
Paul Risker: Is this also because you don’t want to be pigeonholed?
Suzanne Raes: No, it’s really the love of exploring the genre as well. Documentary is great and maybe because I didn’t go to film school, I see every project as a learning opportunity, and I like to do things I have not done before. Also, I’ve worked with a lot of different cinematographers, and I learned from every one of them. I remember making a film [The Successor of Kakiemon] about Japanese pottery and I really got into the lenses because we wanted to make pottery pornography.
I always take a long time when I’m making a film, which is another thing I love, because you become acquainted with the world you film. The people really accept you, forget you, and you’re able to follow a process in the making of the film, like clearing out the house in Where Dragons Live. So, it’s important that you have the time, one or two years, sometimes more, to follow the process.
On Where Dragons Live, I worked with Victor Horstink, the same director of photography who shot Close to Vermeer. Where Dragons Live started out as a project about dragons, and the different stories about dragons from around the world.
I met Harriet more than ten years ago, and we discovered a shared fascination with dragons. She told me about her father and how she grew up, and so, when I visited the house and her mother, who was still alive, the idea was still that we would use this house as a framed narrative or a window onto all the different dragon stories. But when Harriet’s mother died, she said, “If you want to film in the house, you have to be quick.”
Victor and I went there during the second lockdown. This was before we had the film financed because I wasn’t able to get the budget for the dragon story. Victor and I tried to film the house from the perspective of an eight-year-old. We had just done the film about Vermeer, and we made this house Vermeer-like, with its beautiful and full windows of light. Where Dragons Live was a film where I could visually explore, and maybe because we didn’t have a budget yet, we took the time to turn it into a visual adventure.
Paul Risker: There is the question of what will interest a broad audience about these characters, who are clearing out a family home. However, the personal lives of the family, past and present, offer a series of interesting perspectives, especially around gender politics and traditions which the mother and father challenged. It occurs to me that Where Dragons Live is a film that requires the audience to give themselves over to it.
Suzanne Raes: In every good documentary there are layers. Of course, there’s this special place, an eccentric family and these upper-class siblings that are in a time machine and are thrown back to their youth. So, that’s a layer which might be interesting to a lot of people, but this will differ. I’ve had reactions in the UK where people say, “Why should I look at this upper-class and posh family?” What I hope is the film will return you to your own childhood, with the help of the photography and sound design, alongside David Arthur’s editing, which creates space.
I don’t think this film is for everyone, but hopefully you’re willing to give yourself over to this secret garden and this hidden place, which is an anachronism of its own. Even when they grew up, the children were not from this world nor their time. I hope the film brings you back to remembering how, as a child, you tried to understand the world around you, and you make up stories about those things that frighten you and those things you don’t understand.
This is a universal theme I hope the film responds to, but it needs a bit of effort from the viewer to not allow yourself to feel distanced from this strange family. Also, what was it like to lie down at night and hear something from under your bed or hear your parents fight or hear something you don’t understand? That’s an important thing in the process of the film, which started out as a project about dragons, but became more about the mourning process. Eventually, it came back around to the dragon, which is a composition of fear because the film, like the dragon, is a story in which people deal with their fears.
Paul Risker: Whether rich or poor, human beings are storytellers who use their imagination to reinvent the world around them.
Suzanne Raes: I hope it brings you closer to these people, but on the other hand, there are a lot of things in the film that relate to legends and fairy tales. It is about kings, sons, and daughters and the youngest and the oldest. So, I don’t know how it happened, but Victor and I had a lot of fun discovering these connections. It is, of course, extremely confronting that you live in a village and that you don’t play with the other kids, but you defend your garden with sticks. That is something horrible, but in a way, it is this kind of strange fairy tale.
We filmed for more than two years, and so, we went back and forth. The first time we were in the house filming, Victor made this drone shot coming over St. Michael’s Church and the old graveyard to the house. It was like a dragon was there. I thought it was marvellous, but I wanted to make another drone shot coming the other way, where you see the houses in the village, and then you see this wall, behind which is a secluded area, where there is another story. One is where normal people live and the other is the romanticized English county and church mansion. Suddenly there’s a wall and behind it is a pool and a tennis court.
This is something I like to play with. Sometimes it’s a fairy tale, but these people are also captives of their class status, which can be quite damaging things about a childhood. Of course, you have to deal with such things, but it takes a long time to process.
Paul Risker: On your point about the film being about mourning, the film is releasing at a time of significant political change that provokes feelings of loss. The film’s themes relate in a timely way to our collective reality, through this family’s personal story.
Suzanne Raes: The feeling that we are losing a world we loved — yeah, I haven’t thought about that way, but that’s what I feel around me. Here in Holland, people are so shaken up by where we are and where it is heading. Who are our friends? What is democracy? Everything is turned into the enemy — judges and the free press. In Holland, it’s all under pressure. I never thought that I would live to see this.
What the youngest son says is also true, that losing Cumnor Place is like losing England. He says, “The house is England.” It’s about losing a world you were familiar with, or you loved.
Paul Risker: I used to think that the world would make more sense the older I got, but I find it becomes more confusing. The simplicity of a child’s perspective is something to be missed, which maybe relates to the film’s themes.
Suzanne Raes: I don’t know what it is like in England, but in Holland, storytelling has been completely taken over by marketing. I still believe that telling a good story can move people. When my son was two years old, he’d sit in the street and say, “I don’t want to move.” I’d ask him, “Shall I tell you the story about a boy who didn’t want to move?” Then he’d get up and walk alongside me.
You can literally move people by telling stories, but, of course, there has to be a good message in the story. The stories that Donald Trump tells are very powerful ones, but we need to try to have more universal and humane stories. I think that’s what you meant before, that there was some kind of honor or honesty and values, which are now all shook up. It’s really hard to know what kind of stories to tell a child in this world.
Paul Risker: The film looks back to a certain time, and as the world changes, with new technology impacting the way we connect, it’ll be interesting to see how the film resonates with future generations.
Suzanne Raes: There were films from their childhood that they had not seen until I digitalized them, and there’s a scene in Where Dragons Live where I show them these films. Of course, now, everyone is recording everything all the time. You can never look back on all the things you have shot in your life. I’m in the position where there are some images of me as a child, but I know every image because that’s part of my memory.
I’m sometimes surprised about how many young people go to documentary film festivals, but they like the more politically involved films. I’m not sure that there’s a future now for these kinds of documentaries, like Where Dragons Live. I hope there is, and we did some test screenings and what I found interesting is that people between twenty and thirty, and people over fifty, were the ones that enjoyed the film most. The younger audiences are much more connected to their own childhood and know what it is. Of course, when you’re past fifty and maybe when your parents are older, you have the realization, ‘Okay, what will I leave to my children?’ I also showed the film at a film academy to discuss it with students, and those young people were intrigued by the film.
Paul Risker: One reason these types of films might survive is because human beings are fascinated by the inner lives of strangers, which is a curiosity films like Where Dragons Live lean into.
Suzanne Raes: The main reason for making films is that you can travel while sitting in your chair — it takes you inside the lives of other people. It can also create an understanding of other people and, so, hopefully, it bridges a gap, in the same way literature can. It enables you to see and learn from another perspective.
I don’t think documentaries should only be about learning, but you should enjoy this other perspective that’s shown in a well-told story. That’s the main focus, and as a filmmaker, the craft enables you to drag the viewer into another world.
Where Dragons Live is now playing in limited UK theaters.
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