Palestinian Cinema at IFFR 2024: Pictured but Not Forgotten
Scattered over different sections with few ripples in the media, four films detailing the Palestinian experience stood out at Rotterdam.
Rotterdam 2024
Kiss Wagon
Indian director Midhun Murali’s prize-winning animated shadow-puppet epic ‘Kiss Wagon’ is loopy and confusing but still a dazzling, highly original visual feast.
Confidenza
Daniele Luchetti’s ‘Confidenza’ (Trust), from the Domenico Starnone novel about a dangerous confidant, features a noteworthy performance from Elio Germano.
IFFR 2024: The Awards
Three very different films from Japan, India and Australia won Rotterdam’s Tiger Awards, underlining the festival’s range of new talent.
Portrait of a Certain Orient
Awash in a luxuriant atmosphere of passion and emotional discovery created by exquisite b&w images of seas rivers and jungles, Marcelo Gomes’s three characters struggle to shake off the past and move forward post-WW2 in ‘Portrait of a Certain Orient’.
Workers’ Wings
Ilir Hasanaj’s deeply empathetic documentary ‘Workers’ Wings’, is centred on manual labourers who have suffered workplace injuries, is a tender and intimate marvel.
Scud’s Farewell to Filmmaking
TFV interviewed outspoken Hong Kong director Scud, who brought his tenth and perhaps final film to Rotterdam.
Eco Village
Fumbling first love stirs up a frenzy in this indie debut that gets further away the closer you get.
Steppenwolf
Kazakh writer-director Adilkhan Yerzhanov’s stylish but brutal neo-western thriller ‘Steppenwolf’ takes place once upon a time in the Wild East.
Daphne was a torso ending in leaves
In the spritely and tactile essayistic ode to a heroine of Greek myth Daphne was a torso ending in leaves, Catriona Gallagher reflects on the legacy of an ancient arboreal transformation.
The Manetti Bros. and Italian Genre Cinema
TFV correspondent Max Borg investigates the Manetti-verse and how the Italian duo scored a Focus program at this year’s IFFR.
Animalia Paradoxa
Using a blend of stop-motion animation and live-action, Niles Atallah gorgeously crafts a mesmeric, dying world of analogue detritus and vestiges of magical knowledge, in which a half-amphibian being dreams of survival.
Me, Maryam, the Children and 26 Others
A solitary artist rents her Tehran house out to a film crew, in an ingeniously layered, droll reflection on how we construct memory and community.
I Do Not Come To You By Chance
The cast shines, but this adaptation of the popular Nigerian novel could use a little more life.
After The Long Rains
Damien Hauser’s enchanting, sun-baked drama ‘After the Long Rains’ has bigger questions beneath its welcoming glow.
“I like creating work that people are repulsed by”: An interview with Rachel Maclean
The feted Scottish film and video artist Rachel Maclean talks Barbie, James Bond, pink-punk maximalism and the subversive power of bad taste.
Swimming Home
A cryptic Deborah Levy novel is stylised for the screen as an elusive and surrealistic dance of the subconscious, as an uninvited guest crashes a poet’s family vacation.
Stormskerry Maja
A major piece of Finland-Swedish literature comes to life with epic results in Tiina Lymi’s dramatic adaptation, ‘Stormskerry Maja’,
CineVerdict: La historia se escribe de noche
Veredicto: ‘La historia se escribe de noche’ es un retrato inusual de los apagones que han azotado a Cuba durante los últimos años y un ejercicio exquisito de atmósfera cinematográfica
History Is Written at Night
‘History Is Written at Night’ is an unusual portrait of the blackouts that have plagued Cuba over the past few years and an exquisite exercise in atmosphere.
Adorable illusions: Debbie Harry and director Amanda Kramer discuss virtual reality, deepfake porn and New York punk.
The iconic Blondie singer narrates and appears in Kramer’s new documentary ‘So Unreal’, a mind-bending deep dive into prophetic cyberpunk cinema.
Five Experiences from IFFR’s Immersive Media Reviewed
From Aay Liparoto’s powerful ‘Small Acts of Violence’ to Rachel Maclean’s darkly surreal ‘I’m Terribly Sorry’, Rotterdam kept Immersive Media viewers up-to-date.
Tiina Lymi on the Language of Film
Finnish director-screenwriter-actress Tiina Lymi. whose ‘Stormskerry Maja’ had its international premiere in Rotterdam, reflects on making the spoken word realistic on screen.
Milk Teeth
A young woman challenges the superstitious fears of her cult-like patriarchal community in Swiss director Sophia Bösch’s ambitious but uneven dystopian fairy-tale debut ‘Milk Teeth’.
The Paragon
A joyous Kiwi midnight-movie oddity that channels ‘80s fantasy and DIY gumption in a cosmic quest for a hyper-dimensional crystal.
Chile in our Heart and Eyes
Showing films by Chilean directors in exile, IFFR’s Focus on ‘Chile in the Heart’ helps us better understand the country and the 1973 coup d’état that changed it.
CineVerdict: Con Chile en el corazón… y en la mirada
Al mostrar filmes de directores exiliados, el Focus Chile en el corazón de IFFR 2024 nos ayuda a entender mejor el país y el día en que cambió de golpe.
Head South
An absurdist, Gothic twist takes Jonathan Ogilvie’s coming-of-age comedy and New Zealand post-punk subculture origin story into delightfully uncharted territory.
Pierre Monnard is Back in French
The Swiss director is bringing his new film ‘Bisons’ to Rotterdam.
Vanja Kaludjercic and Clare Stewart on Rotterdam’s Present and Future
The mainstream and the niche coexist at IFFR this year under artistic director Kaludjercic and managing director Stewart.