When we talked to Vanja Kaludjercic and Clare Stewart a year ago, the two directors of the International Film Festival Rotterdam mentioned a five-year plan they had for the event. So, when we catch up on Zoom for our customary pre-festival interview, that feels like a good place to start: did the 2024 edition of IFFR live up to the plan, and how are things looking for the future?
“I like that we’re getting continuity in these interviews,” says Stewart before getting into the specifics of her answer. “We had a very good 2024 edition, in terms of how it landed around the business outlook and setting us up for future thinking. We met our financial challenges head-on, with a break-even result, which was fantastic, and some of the changes we made in terms of scale also landed, like the work we did with LantarenVenster and Cinerama, splitting our screenings with their regular programming during the week. It worked very well for them, so we’re returning to that this year.”
There was also a serious uptick in theater occupancy, from 69% in 2023 to 76%, which adds to the positive outlook. With regards to the five-year plan itself, Stewart explains the timeline: “2024 and 2025 are the baseline, so we are allowing ourselves to dream again, after what has been a very challenging period for everyone. We’re cementing our strategy, and looking forward to implementing it.”
Kaludjercic concurs, before going into the reasoning behind the artistic side of the festival: “We’re continuing the work of the last five years, with a range of world cinema we want to defend and support. This goes back to the early days of IFFR, how it started and how we can continue this mission, albeit five decades later. The festival is much larger now, catering to the Rotterdam crowd and an international audience, and it’s all about these films getting the exposure they need and how they’re included in the program. You could never imagine them coexisting, and yet they inform and complete each other.”
On that note, it’s worth mentioning this edition’s bookends: the opener Fabula and the closing film This City Is a Battlefield. The former is a Dutch crime comedy, the latter an Indonesian epic. What does their selection mean in the context of spotlighting elements of those countries’ film industries that don’t necessarily travel much, even on the festival circuit?
“In a way, those two films encompass everything that we are trying to do with the festival. We do often not perceive Dutch cinema through a genre lens, and this film cleverly uses the tropes of crime movies and comedy, and also some fantastical elements. They work really well within Fabula, which means “fairy tale” and allows the filmmakers to use their imagination in an original way.”
As for This City Is a Battlefield, it’s part of a larger attempt to showcase the breadth and range of Indonesian cinema, with 17 titles across all sections. It’s a major feat for a country that is very dear to the IFFR programming team, and whose international popularity, on the festival circuit and streaming platforms, is largely limited to the horror genre. Another example of this is Japan, with 11 films providing a larger overview of its production, beyond the handful of names that tend to pop up at other events.
Not that there isn’t space for a few familiar faces, of course: “Takashi Miike, who has a long history with the festival, is doing us the honor of premiering his new film and taking part in a conversation,” Kaludjercic explains. “I’m really looking forward for audiences to see that.” The mention of Miike – who, during his most prolific years, also made films directly for the video market – makes for a perfect segue into the next topic: the Focus program devoted to VHS culture. It’s a section that came about via the realization that two different films about the history of video stores – Alex Ross Perry’s Videoheaven and Gyz La Rivière’s Videotheek Marco – would be ready in time for this year’s edition.
It is therefore natural to ask both festival directors about their fondest memories of the VHS era. Stewart goes first: “I grew up in a small country town in Australia. I was part of this group of misfits who didn’t really fit in at school, and we called ourselves the Breakfast Club. Our thing was doing slumber parties on Friday nights, going to the VHS store in our pajamas to get the films we would watch on Saturday morning and over lunch while recovering from having had a wild night. And VHS was totally how I found cinema, because I grew up in a town without a movie theater; the closest one was a half-hour drive away, so you would have to find someone willing or able to drive you there.”
Kaludjercic had a similar experience, having grown up in a small village in Croatia. “In our case, there was also a war, which led to the cinemas being close, so video and DVD stores, and the community surrounding them, were instrumental. It’s how I first came into contact with arthouse cinema: Jim Jarmusch, Buñuel, Robert Altman, and early Kusturica, pre-Underground. It’s what made me realize I wanted to discover more about cinema. It was an initiation.”
Stewart picks up on that last word: “Because we were teenagers, our parties would also have this component where we watched increasingly gruesome stuff, really nasty horror movies, and if you weren’t up for it, you were out of the club. I was never very good at it, I still watch horror films through my hands.” What was the nastiest film on offer? “I have to think about that. And it would probably be something that is considered really tame nowadays.” Kaludjercic chimes in: “I saw some stuff, through older siblings who were watching films while our parents were having a night out, that I definitely was too young for, I was six or seven. The film that haunts me the most to this day is Hitchcock’s The Birds.”