IFFR UNVEILS FIRST SELECTIONS FOR 2025 EDITION’S FILM PROGRAMME

The 54th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has unveiled the first wave programming selections for its upcoming event, taking place from 30 January – 9 February, 2025. These 13 titles span the Bright Future and Harbour programming strands and will each have their world premiere at IFFR.

Vanja Kaludjercic, IFFR Festival Director (pictured, below), said: “One of the biggest joys of curating IFFR is working with our team of programmers to create a line-up that showcases the breadth of cinematic experiences and a multitude of perspectives – and our first selection of titles demonstrates our commitment to this ambition.”

IFFR’s Bright Future selection of feature-length debuts is characterised by original subject matter and an individual style, representing the cutting edge of contemporary filmmaking: The 2025 Bright Future selected titles are:

1 GIRL INFINITE - Dir: Lilly Hu (United States, Latvia, Singapore) Two teenage girls, Yin Jia and Tong Tong, live together in this colour-drenched vision of Changsha, China. When Tong Tong drifts away and falls in with a drug dealer, Yin Jia’s love for her means she’ll risk everything to keep Tong Tong by her side.

CAMP D'ÉTÉ - Dir: Mateo Ybarra (Switzerland, France) In Switzerland, the Scout Movement is not a nostalgic fantasy but a vibrant social reality. This bubbly documentary captures the communal cycle of activities during a 14-day camp for youth. No reality TV-style contrived scenes here, this is a moving, joyful glimpse into life-changing experiences.

LATER IN THE CLEARING - Dir: Márton Tarkövi (Hungary, Spain; pictured, left) In a small Hungarian town painter Péter Molnár leads filmmaker Márton Tarkövi on a journey through meadows, clearings and Molnár’s drawings. The viewer joins them, as they discuss art, time and life itself. 

INVISIBLE FLAME - Dir: Oskar Weimar (Kenya) When fish begin to vanish, community members are quick to blame Dani, the elderly woman rumoured to be a witch. Daisy, a fisherman’s daughter, must decide whether to stand by her friend or heed the warnings of those around her.

YOUR TOUCH MAKES OTHERS INVISIBLE - Dir: Rajee Samarasinghe (Sri Lanka, United States) As many as 100,000 people, predominantly members of the minority Tamil community, are estimated to have disappeared during the 26-year-long Sri Lankan Civil War. Through a unique synthesis of interviews, news clips and re-enactments this docufiction feature reflects on this harrowing history as families search for loved ones that disappeared without a trace.

Echoing Rotterdam’s port city identity, Harbour offers a safe haven to the full range of contemporary cinema that the festival champions. The Harbour strand’s first wave of selected titles digs into themes of self-discovery, societal norms and the human condition:

AND THE REST WILL FOLLOW - Dir: Pelin Esmer (Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania; pictured, left) Dreamy housekeeper Aliye spends her days between hotel rooms, escaping into the lives of the guests. But after a brief encounter with a famous filmmaker, Aliye decides that she has a story to tell, which leads to an entanglement of lives and fictions. 

DEAD DOG - Dir: Sarah Francis (Lebanon) Walid and Aida, husband and wife, are reunited after Walid’s many years spent living abroad. Answers to long-hidden secrets are sought in Sarah Francis’ dissection of an estranged marriage.

FINDING RAMLEE - Dir: Megat Sharizal (Malaysia) An endearing retro dramedy set in swinging seventies Kuala Lumpur. Destitute and deep in debt, Zakaria is offered a lifeline by his loan shark: impersonate the Malaysian screen icon P. Ramlee in order to entertain his homebound, time-warped sister.

NO DEJES A LOS NIÑOS SOLOS - Dir: Emilio Portes (Mexico) A mother moves into a new house with her two children. One night she must leave the siblings home alone. What begins as a blast of carefree play soon turns into a claustrophobic horror story. 

PRIMITIVE DIVERSITY - Dir: Alexander Kluge (Germany; pictured right) Filmmaker Alexander Kluge loves to use the expression ‘primitive diversity’ in relation to the origins of his art: the first films that were made, their genres, motives and moods. With the development of AI, Kluge asks, what could its primitive diversity look like?

THANK YOU SATAN - Dir: Hicham Lasri (Morocco, France) In this dark comedy set in the early 1990s, all Serge wants to do is write his Fucking Best Seller! When his publisher nags him to shake things up and bring out his ‘mainstream potential’, he gives it all he has and, with a killer edge.

THE NIGHT IS DARK AND BRIGHTER THAN THE DAY - Dir: Christina Friedrich (Germany) Filmmaker Christina Friedrich asks 33 primary school children about their fears, taking us on a long night-journey through a magic world of their creation. What can the ‘real world’ learn from the games and rituals of children? 

UN GRAN CASINO - Dir: Daniel Hoesl (Austria; pictured, left) The largest casino in Europe but is it just a big mess? Daniel Hoesl presents Un gran casino as an angry musing on a building, an Italian village and all that is done in the name of the unfettered creation of wealth. 

The complete programme for IFFR’s 54th edition will be launched on the 17th December 2024.

PREVIEW: 2021 BRUSSELS INTERNATIONAL FANTASTIC FILM FESTIVAL

If there is one overriding film festival mantra in the wake of COVID-19, it sounds something like, “We’d rather have a live event, but we’ll do our damned best with what we’ve been dealt.” The latest case-in-point - the online program of the 2021 Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFFF), which blasts out to Belgian genre fans from April 6.

The 39th staging of the iconic event made the call to go 100% virtual as the pandemic peaked several months ago, a time when social gatherings were being cancelled all across the globe. In a statement via the BIFFF Board, Festival Director Guy Delmote said, “An online version of the festival fundamentally goes against its DNA. What makes the BIFFF so unique is its audience and the unique atmosphere that reigns supreme during thirteen festival days.”

However, the release of the 2021 roster of films indicates that BIFFF has not compromised its renowned curation skills in any way. A whopping 48 movies and 63 shorts will beam into the homes of Festival pass holders, delivering the next best thing to a live event. “It [may] seem strange that the BIFFF contents itself with an online edition without any physical component,” says Delmote, “but that would be ignoring the countless hours that the team put in preparing [the festival], a team that lives and breathes for the festival, a team that gives everything for the enjoyment of its audience. It would be a shame to cast that aside out of principle.”

The anxiety-inducing Italian/Belgian co-production The Shift carries the official stamp of ‘Opening Night Film’. Alessandro Tonda’s white-knuckle bomb-in-an-ambulance thriller, starring Clotilde Hesme (pictured, above) as the panic-stricken paramedic and a chilling Adam Amara as her explosive-encased passenger, will have its International Premiere via BIFFF Online. Closing out the festival will be the pitch black tragi-comedy Riders of Justice, the latest from man-of-the-moment Mads Mikkelsen, who reteams for the fifth time with director Anders Thomas Jensen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas (their last, 2015’s festival hit Men & Chicken).

The five films vying for the Golden Raven award in the International Competition sector are Cody Calahan’s hilariously bloody ‘serial killer therapy group’ lark, Vicious Fun; Ivan Kavanagh’s psychological horror pic Son (pictured, top), featuring a terrific Andi Matichak as a mother fleeing her cult past; the Russian ocean-trench monster movie Superdeep, from Arseny Sukhin; an unhinged Jasmin Savoy Brown as the triggered homicidal muso in Alex Noyer’s nightmarish Sound of Violence; and, South Korean horror auteur Kwang-bin Kim’s Poltergeist-like haunted house chiller, The Closet.

Other features that carry ‘must-watch’ status from the line-up include the World Premiere of Nick Kaldunski’s surrealist after-dark odyssey Hotel Poseidon, the first film from the groundbreaking and transgressive theatre company, Abattoir Fermé; Jeffrey De Vore’s autobiographical doco De Dick Maas Methode, a peek inside the larger-than-life world of the director of cult classics The Lift (1983), Flodder (1986; pictured, right) and Amsterdamned (1988); and, two films in the mix for the Silver Méliès Best European Fantastic Film award - Stefano Lodovichi’s The Guest Room and Péter Bergendy’s Hungarian horror opus, Post Mortem.

The global short-film community is typically well-represented at the BIFFF. An impressive 33 shorts will unfurl under the Eat My Shorts Parts I-IV, amongst them Joséphine Darcy Hopkins’ pandemic metaphor, Nuage; Marco Bentancor’s existential river-monster thriller, The Water Will Regret You; David Mikalson’s overprotective gymnast coach narrative, Stuck;  and two films from the distant land of Oz - Antony Webb’s desert planet survival story, Carmentis, and Andrew Jaksch’s 60s-set/Twilight Zone-like Today, a work certain to spark controversy given its forthright depiction of domestic violence within a genre setting.

Elsewhere in the program, home-viewing audiences can binge on such fantastical short visions as French director Alice Barsby’s tidal terror thriller, Aquaticans (pictured, right); the marriage-in-a-time-of-the-undead drama, The Last Marriage, from Swedish co-directors Gustav Egerstedt and Johan Tappert; and, homegrown talent Jessica Raes stop-motion animation fable Triskelion, a Celtic clan story steeped in female empowerment.

Also running online, from April 7-10, will be the 5th Brussels Genre Film Market (BIM), featuring a schedule of theatrical screenings, industry meetings and networking events. An initiative of event organisers Peymey Diffusion in conjunction with the support of the City of Brussels and the Brussels Capital Region, the BIM market aims are to stimulate encounters between producers and buyers, facilitate financing through presentations of national and international support mechanisms and promote Belgian professionals, studio’s and post-production firms.

The 40th BRUSSELS INTERNATIONAL FANTASTIC FILM FESTIVAL is a geo-blocked virtual event, available only to residents of Belgium. International press can apply for accreditation at kahina@biff.net. The 5th BRUSSELS GENRE FILM MARKET is open to all industry professionals; accreditation applications can be submitted here.

VIETNAM

Despite being torn apart by the devastation of two separate aggressor invasions and often finding its artisans hamstrung by censorship and bureacracy, the 100 year-old Vietnamese film community has forged a strong brand and unique voice within the global cinema community.

               (Picture, above: Tôi thay hoa vàng trên co xanh; Yellow Flowers on the Green Grass, 2015) 

Three prominent production entities were formed in Hanoi in the 1920’s - the Huong Ky Film Company, producers of documentary footage (notably the funeral of Emperor Khải Định and the enthronement of Bảo Đại) and the silent feature Một đồng kẽm tậu được ngựa (A Penny for a Horse); the Vietnam Film Group, producers of Một buổi chiều trên sông Cửu Long (An Evening on the Mekong River) and Thầy Pháp râu đỏ (The Red-Bearded Sorcerer); and, the Asia Film Group, makers of the nation’s first sound films Trọn với tình (True to Love), Khúc khải hoàn (The Song of Triumph) and Toét sợ ma (Toét's Scared of Ghosts), between the years 1937 and 1940.

The government propaganda machine was also a prominent producer of documentary footage, having formed a film unit in 1945 (pictured, right). They were responsible for capturing iconic images of the First Indochina war in documentaries such as Trận Mộc Hóa (Mộc Hóa Battle, 1948), Trận Đông Khê (Đông Khê Battle, 1950), Chiến thắng Tây Bắc (North West Victory, 1952) and Việt Nam trên đường thắng lợi (Việt Nam on the Road to Victory, 1953).

Following the creation of the North and South divisions, film production was shared between Hanoi (which produced the government’s propaganda films) and Saigon (where the more audience-friendly genre films were being made). With the opening of the Hanoi Film School in 1959, talents such as Nguyễn Hồng Nghị (Chung một Dòng sông / Together on the Same River, 1960) and Phạm Kỳ Nam (whose 1963 feature Chị Tư Hậu / Sister Tư Hậu won a Silver Bear at the Moscow Film Festival) began to emerge. Manuel Conde's Filipino co-production Chúng Tôi Muốn Sống (We Want To Live), a stiring account of wartime defiance, was a hit. There was even an animated feature, Đáng đời Thằng cáo (A Just Punishment for the Fox), in 1960.

But, with the American War ravaging the countryside and its resources, most film technicians and equipment were being utilised for newsreels, sent by embedded photojournalists. Some features were produced – the hit film Chúng Tôi Muốn Sống (We Want To Live, 1959), the family dramas Nguyễn Văn Trỗi (1966), Người Tình Không Chân Dung (Faceless Love, 1965) and Chiếc Bóng Bên Đường (Roadside Shadow, 1967) and the comedy Triệu Phú Bất Đắc Dĩ (The Reluctant Millionaire, 1970) – but in a country under siege, cinema was often a luxury that the population could not afford.

The reunification of Vietnam in the 1970’s led to a wave of social-realism cinema, stories that focussed on the plight of the nation’s people in wartime and of heroic, revolutionary struggles in the face of oppression; notably Em bé Hà Nội (Little Girl of Hanoi, 1973; in full, above) and Cánh đồng hoang (The Abandoned Field: Free Fire Zone, 1979). Production surged – by the early ‘80’s, Vietnam was producing 20 feature films annually, including the international critical hits Hà Nội trong mắt ai? (Hanoi Through Whose Eyes?, 1983),  Bao gio cho den thang muoi (The Love Doesn't Come Back, 1984), Bao Giò Cho Đến Tháng Mười (When The Tenth Month Comes, 1984), Người công giáo huyện Thống Nhất (A Catholic in Thống Nhất District, 1985) and Cô gái trên sông (Girl on the River, 1987).

The introduction of free market economics under the Đổi Mới period of social reform and the wave of television and video content that surged into the sector on the back of the VHS boom kept the population indoors for most of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, severely hurting the exhibition sector. B-movie aesthetics came to the fore and artistry suffered, and soon the unregulated film industry was in the hands of producers chasing the quick buck. The richness that had been synonymous with the great visionaries of past Vietnamese film eras was kept alive through such independent works as Hà Nội trong mắt ai? (Hanoi Through Whose Eyes?, 1983); Thuong nho dong que (Nostalgia for The Countryside, 1984); Anh và em (Siblings, 1986); Chuyện tử tế (Story of Good Behavior, 1987); Gánh Xiếc Rong (The Travelling Circus, 1988; pictured, above); and, Canh bac (The Gamble, 1991), though clogged distribution channels meant these films were often not heralded until years after they were made.

The Vietnamese film industry turned around overnight with the release of Tran Anh Hung’s The Scent of the Green Papaya in 1993. The film would win two awards at the Cannes Film Festival, including the Camera d’Or, trophies from the British Film Institute and the French Film Academy and an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Tran’s follow-up film, Cyclo (1995), would win the highest accolade at the Venice Film Festival and his subsequent works - Mùa hè chiều thẳng đứng (The Vertical Ray of the Sun, 2000) and I Come With The Rain (2009, starring Hollywood import Josh Hartnett) – would be globally acclaimed.

Tran’s presence in the marketplace opened the films of Vietnam to a wider audience and inspired his countrymen. Soon, such notable works as Regis Wargnier's Indochine (1992) and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Lover (1993), two high-profile international productions, as well as Tony Bui's Ba mùa (Three Seasons, 1998, with Harvey Keitel), Lê Hoàng's Gai nhay (Bar Girls, 2002) and its sequel Lọ lem hè phố (Street Cinderella, 2004), Nguyễn Võ Nghiêm Minh’s Mùa len trâu (The Buffalo Boy, 2003), Phi Tiến Sơn’s Lưới trời (Heaven's Net, 2005), Quang Hai Ngo’s Chuyen cua Pao (Pao’s Story, 2006) and Ham Tran’s Vượt Sóng (Journey From The Fall, 2007) were impacting festival programmes and arthouse cinemas worldwide. A horror film (a genre frowned upon by censors) finally made its way to local screens in the shape of Kim Tae-Kyeong’s Muoi The Legend of the Portrait (2007), the first film to bear a under-16 censorship tag; documentaries have found favour again, particularly Nguyen Trinh Thi’s gay-themed Love Man Love Woman (2008) and Doan Hoang’s Oh Saigon (2008).

The debate over censorship and the influential role of the Vietnam Film Department flared in 2013, when the Nguyen Brothers film Bui doi Cho Lon faced a ban for content deemed violent and anti-social. The banning raised deep concerns amongst the industry that the governing body was becoming too strict in its enforcement of ageing standards, especially when anachronistic actioners like Lady Assassins 3D (2013), Quang Dung Nguyen’s Shaw-inspired Ninja-babe romp, were getting greenlit and heavily promoted.
That same year, the Vietnam Department of Cinema announced with much fanfare that an injection of US$309million would kickstart a resurgence in Vietnamese production and exhibition. The aim was to ensure the region’s film output and cinema attendence would be the number one per capita earner in South-East Asian territories by 2020. However, as of 2016, it is Korean interests CJ CGV Cinemas and Lotte Theatres that have secured control of 70% of the multiplex market, while the planned investment in regional cinema venues (predominantly owned and operators by local entrepreneurs) has slowed. Piracy remains a major concern, with stalls often spruiking DVD knock-offs of current release titles on the same street as theatrical houses.

Despite these obstacles, both the commercial film sector and independent arthouse producers are surviving in the modern Vietnamese film landscape. Broad entertainment such as the period action epic Lua Phat (Once Upon a Time in Vietnam, 2013), the body-swap comedy Em là bà nội của anh (You Are my Grandmother, 2015), the raucous farce Battle of The Brides (2011) and its sequel (2014) and the horror/romance hybrid The Housemaid: Co Hau Gai (2016) open to receptive local crowds, while more personal, indie-sector works such as the rural drama Tôi thay hoa vàng trên co xanh (Yellow Flowers on the Green Grass, 2015, and Vietnam’s official foreign language Oscar entry in 2016), the transgender documentary Finding Phong (2015), Dap Canh Giua Khong Trung (Flapping from the Middle of Nowhere, 2014) and the wartime melodrama Nha tien tri (The Prophecy, 2015), buoy the sector, which maintains an enviable presence in the face of the western sector imports.

Key Events:
The Hanoi International Film Festival – Hanoi, Vietnam; November.
The 4th edition of the northern city's premiere film event begins November 1, under the guidance of the Cinema Department of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. To honour the theme of 'Cinema, Integration and Sustainable Development', the event will screen 12 features from 11 countries, as well as provide a sidebar focus on Indian Cinema.

Contact:
Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST)
Cinema Department
147 Hoàng Hoa Thám,
Quận Ba Đình, Hà Nội.
Tel: (+84) 4 845 2402
Fax: (+84) 4 823 4997
Eml: cucdienanh@fpt.vn
Web: http://english.cinet.vn/

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