Sunday Ninth, produced by Flemish outfit Panenka and which world premiered recently at Tallinn Black Nights, marks a poignant departure/evolution for doc director Kat Steppe. The film is a fiction but it is set in a real operational care home. The residents are genuine, as are their responses to the action around them. Even the film’s title derives from the repeated phrase of one woman in the home.
In the film, brothers Horst (65, played by Josse De Pauw) and Franz (59, played by Peter Van den Begin) finally cross paths again. The pair have a fractious past, rooted in a long-buried family secret dating back to childhood. But now Horst is struggling with the onset of Alzheimer’s and is weary of life. Franz, meanwhile, is broke, and sees salvation in the form of his brother’s inheritance. At which point, Andrea (54, played by Kristien De Proost), Horst’s first love, resurfaces, intent on reclaiming what she once lost. Old feelings ignite, old wounds reopen, and the brothers discover that their rivalry runs far deeper than they ever realized. Caught in a struggle between love, loyalty, regret, and greed, each must confront a single question: how far can each go to repair the past?
“I wanted to make a fiction film for starters, but also, I know that when something is real, it has a direct impact,” Steppe explains her choice of genre, having delivered the 6-part doc series The Vatican in 2024. “Exploring fiction with an actor is another beautiful way to have an impact. A fictional character or situation steadily crawls under your skin and in doing so, becomes a part of your very self….You can say that I worked with the fact that those are real people [who are used] as a dramatic storytelling tool.”
The subject of Alzheimer’s is handled with great sensitivity in the film, and at times with humour. Horst may no longer have total sense of recall, but he has a vigorous muscle memory for combat, especially when his brother is nearby. Steppe explains her interest in the subject, and what persuaded her to volunteer at a care home in Antwerp for a year, two to three times a week.
“I read a line in an Irish poem: ‘There is a place where all our vanished days gather, and that place is called the memory,’” she says. “Memory and time passing has been a lifelong obsession of mine, even when I was a child. I started thinking about who you are, what you are, is because of your past, or your ability to recall that past. And then how you are perceived by other people if you can’t recall that past.”
The part of Horst is based on her friendship with a patient named Eddy who, despite his illness, was highly articulate and expressive. “Eddy taught me a lot about the disease, from first-hand experience,” Steppe explains in her film notes. “People living with Alzheimer’s are far from empty shells. Many remain acutely aware of how their abilities are deteriorating. What makes them feel better is being able to talk about what they see and feel without us correcting them all the time. Andrea’s character comes to realize the same thing: to be able to get through to Horst, she has to follow his lead.”
At times the film is downright hilarious. “I didn’t want to make the film too dark. The first versions of the script were even lighter, because I thought of it as a dark comedy, but when you’re mixing in real people, you have to stay respectful of them,” Steppe explains.
Sunday Ninth has particular personal resonance for the filmmaker, as two members of her family were diagnosed during its production – one with early-onset dementia and one with Alzheimer’s. “I think it’s important to be aware that everyone has a past. People with Alzheimer’s had a rich life and that still makes an impact on who they are now, even if they can’t explain it. It’s important to look behind the disease and see people there,” she says.
The confined location determined the style of shooting, Steppe further comments. “Bringing a film crew into an operational care home, you have to suppress some of the grand cinematic gestures. So our style is more observational, and I wanted to pull that through the rest of the film. My father, who is a painter, painted clouds on the care home walls, it was symbolic of how they imagine themselves outside of those walls, but it also looked great in the frame.”
That said, the beach shots on Achill Island, Ireland, where The Banshees of Inisherin was shot, are beautiful. “When I get dementia, this will be the place I will go to in my brain,” she imagines.
In her film notes, Steppe articulates the overall sense of imperative that her film embodies. “To look, listen, observe what [they] need. What people with Alzheimer need really badly, is the feeling of still being someone. To someone else. Sunday Ninth is a plea for compassion toward those whose lives no longer follow a logical pattern. It is a story about regret, guilt and penance. About hope and despair. About family ties. About love and about a waning memory that has erased that love. About lost time, in which Alzheimer’s is the obstacle to making up for it.”
Additional questions posed by Wendy Mitchell.
