In Over the Cattle Grid you watch and listen to Robert, Rinke and Ytzen. Three people who spend every day in the woods between the villages of Odoorn and Exloo. Ytzen and Rinke because they live in the middle of the woods, Robert because he cycles through the woods every day to get to work. All three experience the world behind the cattle grid as a different world than the one in front of the cattle grid. Behind the grid there is peace, the forest is sometimes endless and time seems to pass in a different way. Or as Ytzen says “there is no time, there is just being”. Yet they experience a lot of change, because the forest is different every day. But Robert, Rinke and Ytzen also see things they have never seen before, such as trees that lose their leaves in September and plants that want to start growing in the middle of winter.

You will also see Wietse de Haan and Evert Prummel, they build instruments from dead trees. All the music you hear in the film was played on these tree instruments and recorded in the forest. Okki herself also occasionally passes by. She has been coming to this piece of forest all her life, which is a kilometer from the house where she grew up. Not only has she known the forest, but also Robert, Ytzen and Rinke for most of her life.