IFFR 2005

Oxide Pang

A beautiful young woman gets a kick out of photographing the dead. That has to attrach the wrong kind. Stylish and bloodcurdling psychological horror with influences from well-thumbed comics to sadistic philosophers. With 2R, the Spice Girls of Hong Kong.

Rotterdammerung

Ab-Normal Beauty

Fabrice Du Welz

Itinerant singer takes a wrong turn in the dark Ardennes. This is the start of his Calvary. With an innkeeper who recognises his long-lost wife in the singer, villagers who also demand "access" to her, and a priceless dance by the degenerates. With a wink, but also genuinely gruesome.

Calvaire

Kiriya Kazuaki

Wild eclectic amalgamation of styles, in this apocalyptic science-fiction film that pulls out all the stops in animation and live action. In a post-nuclear world, a scientist brings back to life his dead son who then grows to be an unstable but harnessed superhero. In the meanwhile, mutants turn against humanity with a robot army.

Casshern

Miike Takashi

Izo is the incarnation of denial, the opposite of perfect Japan, in the form of a reincarnated samurai who murders his way to his mother, the prime minister and maybe the emperor himself. Philosophical splatter movie and historic-political tract in bloody disguise is accompanied by songs by the hippie troubadour Tomokawa Kazuki.

Inoue Yasuo

Psycho-suspense based on a legendary manga by Santa Inoue about Juzo and his violent alter ego Number 13, who does take his revenge on the man who bullied him as a little boy. With a guest role by Miike Takashi as angry neighbour (and hence first victim).

The Neighbor No. 13

Sekiguchi Gen

If there was a contest for the fastest, strangest and most excessive film of the festival, the winner would be obvious. Over-the-top is putting it mildly for this feature debut by the experienced commercial director Sekiguchi. An explosion of crazy Japanese pop culture.

Survive Style 5+

Fruit Chan

Park Chanwook

Nail biting about human shortcomings comes surrealistically yet terrifyingly to the surface in three segments. Japanese Miike Takashi (of Audition and Izo), Korean Park Chan-Wook (of Old Boy) and Hong Kong's Fruit Chan (of Little Cheung) live it up in their own characteritsic way in gruesome destinies.

Three... Extremes

Tsukamoto Shinya

Philosophical horror. Dark and subdued, with a surprisingly serious undertone. Medical student with amnesia becomes fascinated by the anatomy of a dead young woman. He doesn't know that he already knows her. Not yet.

IFFR 2025
30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025