Rotterdam 2025: The Verdict
The 54th edition of International Film Festival Rotterdam served up a cosmopolitan banquet of punky Balkan bio-drama and chilly Baltic brooding, arty African essay-films and mind-bending Mexican animation.
Rotterdam 2025
Red Stars Upon the Field
In her sprawling but boldly original debut feature ‘Red Stars Upon the Field’, Laura Laabs turns the hidden skeletons of German history into a maximalist magical murder mystery tour.
IFFR 2025 Awards
Original, sophisticated films that pushed the limits of fiction and documentary were recognized by juries at this year’s Tiger awards.
Acts of Love
Jeppe Rønde’s psychologically complex yet tender drama delves into the world of trauma healing and cults without sensationalism, preferring to raise questions rather than supply answers.
John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office
Science fact is stranger that science fiction in this tonally flat but fascinating documentary profile of controversial dolphin whisperer, inner-space psychonaut and LSD enthusiast John C. Lilly.
Our Father – The Last Days of a Dictator
Portuguese documentary-maker José Filipe Costa swerves towards fictional-feature territory in ‘Our Father – The Last Days of a Dictator’, a stylistically measured yet quietly glorious character study of the ousted tyrant Salazar.
The Tree of Authenticity
The only African film in this year’s IFFR Tiger Competition, Sammy Baloji’s ‘The Tree of Authenticity’ offers a much-needed disruption to Belgian colonial archives, which dominate historical narratives in Congo.
a river holds a perfect memory
Tying together disparate locations in Northern England and Jamaica, Hope Strickland’s evocative boat ride, ‘a river holds a perfect memory,’ explores the interrelations between labour, memory and rivers.
Wind, Talk to Me
Stefan Djordjevic’s sensitive doc portrait of grief and nature’s endless capacity for renewal is a gem of small gestures and surreal moments.
Memory Is an Animal, It Barks with Many Mouths
Ostensibly about the preservation of an ancient language, Eva Giolo’s essay film ‘Memory Is an Animal, It Barks with Many Mouths’ combines linguistics with landscape and myth to captivating effect.
Gowok: Javanese Kamasutra
Indonesian filmmaker Harung Bramatyo makes his first foray at a top-ranked international festival with “Gowok: Javanese Kamasutra’, a visually arresting cross-generational melodrama charting an appre’tice sex tutor’s entangled emotions about love and emancipation.
Don’t Leave the Kids Alone
A mother unadvisedly leaves her two young sons home alone in Don’t Leave the Kids Alone chaotic but largely entertaining Mexican haunted house horror.
Fiume o morte!
Igor Bezinovic engages citizens of his Croatian hometown in a rigorously researched, irreverently punk re-enactment of its brief occupation by Italian poet and self-styled dictator Gabriele D’Annunzio.
Common Pear
Traditional fruit cultivation becomes a source of archival fascination in Common Pear, a sci-fi documentary hybrid set amidst environmental collapse.
Un gran casino
Daniel Hoesl’s latest skewering of the excesses of the mega-rich is a mesmeric and doomy doc hybrid about the Casino di Campione, Europe’s largest casino.
Empty Rider
The third work in Lawrence Lek’s trilogy on disobedient driverless cars, Empty Rider explores autonomy and responsibility through a futuristic AI show trial.
Wondrous is the Silence of My Master
Ivan Salatic’s magnificently moody, intelligent and doom-laden vision of Montenegrin freedom fighting and exile questions the formation and undoing of national myth.
Rains Over Babel
Colombian writer-director Gala del Sol’s stylish debut feature ‘Rains Over Babel’ is an audacious, ambitious, kaleidoscopic carnival of queerness loosely based on Dante’s ‘Inferno’.
The Assistant
Wilhelm and Anka Sasnal channel the spirit of cult modernist Robert Walser in this strange, caustic “repainting” of his novel about a beleaguered assistant.
September Says
Two troubled teenage sisters share a spookily close bond in actor turned director Ariane Labed’s patchy but atmospheric feature debut ‘September Says’.
An Interview with Marten Rabarts
TFV spoke with Marten Rabarts, the newly appointed Head of IFFR Pro, to discuss the industry side of the festival.
The Legends of Eternal Snow
Sakha cinema pioneer Aleksei Romanov reworks an eerie Yakut tale for an intriguing mix of ethnographic detail, anti-imperial defiance and bone-deep chill.
An Interview with Vanja Kaludjercic and Clare Stewart
TFV spoke to IFFR’s directors, Vanja Kaludjercic and Clare Stewart, about the 2025 edition and what they have planned beyond that.