On the night of January 31, 1953, the southwestern dykes separating the Netherlands from the North Sea failed to keep out severe spring tide flooding.

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The Netherlands' 1953 floods, which killed 1,835 people and left 72,000 homeless, is the theme of a dramatic new film entitled "De Storm", a reconstruction of the gravest natural catastrophe in the country's modern history.

"Nobody has ever attempted to do it before," Dutch director Ben Sombogaart, 62, told AFP ahead of the film's release nearly 60 years after the actual events.
"It was very complicated, technically but also because there are still many survivors."

On the night of January 31, 1953, the southwestern dykes separating the Netherlands from the North Sea failed to keep out severe spring tide flooding.
A total 200,000 hectares of land and 3,000 houses in the provinces of Zeeland, Noord Brabant and Zuid-Holland were engulfed.

Recounting the events, "De Storm" follows the attempts of 19-year-old Julia to find her baby, from whom she was separated in the storm. Julia is aided in her search by a handsome soldier who had earlier saved her from the flood waters.

The film shows Julia's desperate search for her son in the murky, cold waters, filled with the corpses of cows floating past submerged rooftops.

All the open-air scenes were filmed in Belgian town of Tielrode, where a portion of reclaimed land had been re-flooded for this purpose for a period of six weeks in the autumn of last year.

A special wall of 200 metres in length and two metres in height was constructed for the movie, representing a submerged dyke whose barely protruding top had provided flood survivors with the only solid ground for miles on end.

"It is very difficult to film in the water," said the director. "It takes three times as long; it is cold, the actors have to swim a lot."

Sombogaart was six years old in 1953.