Raingou’s first feature, ‘Le spectre de Boko Haram’, is a moving documentary that views the horrors of terrorism through the eyes of children.
(1010)
51st International Film Festival Rotterdam
01/26/2022
Festival Reviews
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2023
As it finally returned from Covid-19 limbo under new artistic director Vanja Kaludjercic, the Dutch film festival reaffirmed its core mission to promote fresh, socially conscious, culturally rich cinema.
Playland
The ghosts of Playland Cafe, Boston’s oldest gay bar pre-demolition, return in this heartfelt, multi-layered tribute to marginalised history, DIY spirit and queer performance.
Three Sparks
A sensitive, intricately layered and hand-crafted portrait of mountain life in northern Albania, women’s labour and ancient laws.
Four Little Adults
This entertaining rom-com offers a freshly subversive, anti-bourgeois twist on the genre, as a pastor and politician in Helsinki open up their marriage to non-monogamy.
Não Sou Nada — The Nothingness Club
An outlandish, radical trip inside Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa’s mind, gorgeously realised as a mysterious office of alter-egos and clacking typewriters.
Gagaland
A street dance craze becomes a way of life for kids live-streaming from the social margins, in this psychedelic celebration of self-expression.
La Palisiada
An oblique, inventive anatomy of an investigation and execution in ‘90s Ukraine, and a legacy of Soviet violence passed down to today’s generation.
A Primeira Idade
Banishments cannot stave off knowledge in this visually bold fable about a colony of children insulated from death and memory.
Birdland
Revolution is coming in this intricate, densely layered vision of the burning of a forest and the girl who harnesses the technology of dissent.
Eami
The plight of the indigenous Ayoreo, the last tribe to avoid contact and reclaim its territories in the Paraguayan Chaco Forest, is painstakingly and poetically rendered in this drama premiering at Rotterdam.
A Human Position
A young woman struggles to process personal trauma and wider social injustice in Norwegian director Anders Emblem’s slender but quietly haunting drama A Human Position,
Blue Has No Dimensions
Ágata de Pinho impresses both in front of and behind the camera in this visceral drama about a woman who believes she will disappear on her 28th birthday.
The Dream and the Radio
Canadian filmmakers Renaud Després-Larose and Ana Tapia Rousiouk pay tribute to Stan Brakhage, Guy Debord, Jean-Luc Godard and Pedro Costa in an intriguing experimental exercise looking at the history of cinema and old-school political activism.
Kung Fu Zohra
French director Mabrouk El Mechri’s screwball action comedy about domestic violence, Kung Fu Zohra is admirably audacious but misses the target.
The Last Ride of the Wolves
Alberto De Michele artfully deglamorises the gangster film, constructing instead two interlaced stories around a man’s complex relationship with his father and the latter’s plans for one last heist.
To Love Again
The vestiges of politically-instigated past trauma come back to trouble an older couple in their second marriage as they begin ruminating on their demise in Gao Linyang’s subtly crafted, detail and performance driven feature debut.
Drifting Petals
The history of Hong Kong and its seething democratic movements is interwoven with a cryptic ghost story in Clara Law’s challenging film about memory and political struggle.
Excess Will Save Us
French debutante director Morgane Dziurla-Petit returns to her home village for the playful and poignant docu-fiction hybrid Excess Will Save Us.
Third Grade
French auteur Jacques Doillon returns to form in this endearing, small-scale chronicle of abuse and friendship between two kids from different social classes.
Freda
Gessica Geneus’s debut feature is a superb meditation on sisterhood, motherhood, and what it means to love a failing nation.
Singing in the Wilderness
A bittersweet chronicle of Miao farmers who form a Christian choir in the remote mountains in China, and who are recruited to perform nationally while gradually losing their lands, autonomy, and identity.
Yamabuki
Focusing on the plight of both working-class locals and migrant labourers in a small town, Juichiro Yamasaki’s third feature powerful chronicles the greying fortunes of Japan’s depopulated provinces.
I Get Knocked Down
Retired pop star and former anarchist Dunstan Bruce tries to rekindle his youthful punk rage in the charmingly offbeat music documentary I Get Knocked Down.
Malintzin 17
Eugenio and Mara Polgovsky gently comment on the cycle of life in an observational documentary shot through a window in Mexico City.
Achrome
An innocent farm boy experiences first-hand the horrors of the Nazi occupation of the Baltic states when he becomes a collaborator in Maria Ignatenko’s sensitive but over-aestheticized reflection on war.
Assault
Kazakh director Adilkhan Yerzhanov finds tragicomic humour in Assault, a bleakly stylish thriller about a snowbound high school under terrorist attack.
Give Me Pity!
Amanda Kramer recreates a 1970s-style variety TV special to comment on a certain kind of diva celebrity, but the results are tediously self-indulgent, clueless about camp affect, and open to claims of disingenuousness.
Broadway
The Greek weird wave meets film noir in this quirky crime drama from first-time feature director Christos Massalas.
Met Mes
A little lie to the police threatens to change a teenager’s life in Sam De Jong’s insightful and sometimes distractingly overdriven film.
My Emptiness and I
This fictionalized portrait of a trans woman’s emotional journey towards selfhood tries to cover too many bases in the psychological process, but Raphaëlle Perez’s sympathetic performance and the film’s overall sensitivity make up for some of its flaws.
Daryn’s Gym
Brett Michael Innes’ third film, set mostly at a gym in Johannesburg, goes down easy and would be fun for the family—as long as you keep the kids away.
Phantom Project
A pleasant though minor queer-skewed indie slice-of-life look at Millenials in Chile, using a ghost device as a way of concretizing the niggling concerns within a struggling actor’s subconscious.
Please Baby Please
Andrea Riseborough, Harry Melling and Demi Moore celebrate the hidden queerness of vintage Hollywood in Amanda Kramer’s WTF retro-musical Please Baby Please.
The Island
Robinson Crusoe goes musical in a deliciously disorienting brain-teaser from feted Romanian animation director Anca Damian.
TFV talks to Tiger Award winner Cyrielle Raingou
Raingou’s first feature, ‘Le spectre de Boko Haram’, is a moving documentary that views the horrors of terrorism through the eyes of children.
International Film Festival Rotterdam 2023
As it finally returned from Covid-19 limbo under new artistic director Vanja Kaludjercic, the Dutch film festival reaffirmed its core mission to promote fresh, socially conscious, culturally rich cinema.
Playland
The ghosts of Playland Cafe, Boston’s oldest gay bar pre-demolition, return in this heartfelt, multi-layered tribute to marginalised history, DIY spirit and queer performance.
Three Sparks
A sensitive, intricately layered and hand-crafted portrait of mountain life in northern Albania, women’s labour and ancient laws.
Four Little Adults
This entertaining rom-com offers a freshly subversive, anti-bourgeois twist on the genre, as a pastor and politician in Helsinki open up their marriage to non-monogamy.
Não Sou Nada — The Nothingness Club
An outlandish, radical trip inside Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa’s mind, gorgeously realised as a mysterious office of alter-egos and clacking typewriters.
Gagaland
A street dance craze becomes a way of life for kids live-streaming from the social margins, in this psychedelic celebration of self-expression.
La Palisiada
An oblique, inventive anatomy of an investigation and execution in ‘90s Ukraine, and a legacy of Soviet violence passed down to today’s generation.
A Primeira Idade
Banishments cannot stave off knowledge in this visually bold fable about a colony of children insulated from death and memory.
Birdland
Revolution is coming in this intricate, densely layered vision of the burning of a forest and the girl who harnesses the technology of dissent.
Awards Corner
Rotterdam
- Tiger Award 2022 for
Eami (Paraguay)
Director: Paz Encina - Tiger Competition Special Jury Award for
Excess Will Save Us (France)
Director: Morgane Dziurla-Petit - Tiger Competition Special Jury Award for
To Love Again (China)
Director: Gao Linyang - VPRO Big Screen Award for
Kung Fu Zohra (France)
Director: Mabrouk El Mechri - Ammodo Tiger Short Award for
Becoming Male in the Middle Ages (Portugal)
Director: Pedro Neves Marques - Ammodo Tiger Short Award for
Nazarbazi: The Play of Glances (Iran)
Director: Maryam Tafakory - Ammodo Tiger Short Award for
Nosferasta: First Bite (USA)
Director: Bayley Sweitzer - FIPRESCI Award for
To Love Again (China)
Director: Gao Linyang