IFFR 2008

Xu Zhen

A boyish prank but also clearly a politically motivated performance. An artist attacks a neighbouring country.

Exploding Cinema: New Dragon Inns

18 Days

Shu Li-Ting

A sweetly jumping girl. But the female film maker doesn't want to make a sweet film. That's precisely the problem.

Apichatpong Weerasethekul (advisor)

Pimpaka Towira

Jakrawal Nilthamrong

Akritchalerm Kalayanamitr

Koichi Shimizu

Interactive installation. Two spaces. A light space with sounds. A dark space with images. Hundreds of buttons can be used to change the sound or images. The images have been taken from clandestine shots of the Thai army killing demonstrators.

Black Air

Zhang Ding

In the evening a strange man performs a kind of ritual for himself in a square. The film maker sees a performance artist in the man and records the performance from start to finish. Really crazy.

Crazy Man

Wang Bing

Wang Bing headed for a plateau in the Gobi desert to show just how much China needs oil at the moment. Just how hard they have to work there in barren conditions. He returned home with altitude sickness and also with a film that lasts two whole days in exhibition.

Crude Oil

Intense documentary about the ageing journalist He Fengming who tells the sad but fascinating story of her life. Oral history in its most pure, effective and emotional form. She survived the terrors of the 20th century in China to tell the story.

Fengming, a Chinese Memoir

Thaweesak Srithongdee

Crooks, criminals and dictators can also be heroes in the ironic approach of the artist. Or maybe everything just blends together.

Hero

Lu Chun Sheng

The film is not about history or chemistry. An artist re-invented film making and indulges in an imagined portrayal of non-existent stories. Funny, confusing and original.

History of Chemistry 1 & 2

Cao Fei

Artist adopted the persona of a pretty young woman in Second Life. In the Internet world she became involved in a relationship with a man who also turns out not to be what he says. The documentary as animation film.

i-Mirror

Tsai Ming-liang

A film maker dreams about a cinema and sees his loved ones from childhood. That childhood and the loved ones cannot be brought back, but the cinema can. Or at least a little bit. The chairs from an old cinema from Malaysia are now in Rotterdam and the film maker shows his dream.

Is It a Dream?

Nitipong Thinthupthai

It seems idyllic: Thai children playing with a bag of rice as a boxing bag. But they know they can also kick each other.

Krasob

Thunska Pansittivorakul

A white dream of a gay film maker. Two naked men on a white sofa. Yet it remains in the imagination.

Middle-Earth

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Cabin had to become a film for the King of Thailand, but the maker filmed him at home in his home village. 'If the king is good, he has to be good everywhere,' he must have thought.

Nimit

Yang Heng

Installation by a young Chinese film maker who brought his début film to Rotterdam last year. Now he makes his debut as an installation maker with a portrayal of the Buddhist view of life and death. A vision of the other bank.

Nirvana

Chen Chieh-jen

It's a work of art and not a political pamphlet, but in a nationalist country like Taiwan, even an empty room or a pile of old newspapers has a political charge.

On Going

Cui Zi'en

Not a film with easy chatter. Modern men tackle the subjects of the great philosophers in conversations. Also of great historic thinkers. But don't think it is boring! It's also about lust and body. A feature as a well thought out essay. A film as a work of art.

Only Child, Upward, Downward, Forward, Backward, Rightward and Leftward

Uruphong Raksasad

Bizarre animation film that is ironically described as a portrayal of the landscape of the planet Earth. But then very different from the one we know.

The Planet

Farmers shoot homemade rockets. Just keep praying. The maker allows us to share his enjoyment.

The Rocket

An international harbour strike forced a ship loaded without the union's approval to sail from harbour to harbour for two years. Until it reached Taiwan. The unions there didn't know about it.

The Route

Yang Fudong

Yang Fudong is one of the greatest modern Chinese artists. Outside the context of museums and galleries, he also turns out to be a great film maker with an extremely vivid imagination. In the most stunning black &amp; white possible, he shows us a beautiful and complex world. Filled with thoughts, old and new.

Seven Intellectuals in Bamboo Forest Part 1-5

Ella Raidel

Hongjohn Lin

The makers found a curious scale model of a high rise apartment block by the rubbish in Taipei. They saw something beautiful and now we can see it too.

Somewhere, Late Afternoon...

Writing the truth is risky. A young trainee journalist in Thailand found that out when she dared write something about the business involvements of the president in a local paper. Just as headstrong as the journalist, the film maker followed her tilting against windmills.

The Truth Be Told: The Cases Against Supinya Klangnarong

Wang Ya-Hui

CGI, computer generated images, are apparently not limited to major Hollywood films. A small film can also generate a small UFO. A cloud as visitor.

Visitor

Basically a preliminary study for a dream to film. A very white man withdraws into a jungle hut by a river. A boy once saw his future in him.

A Voyage of Foreteller

Lamp factory asked a playful artist if she would realise an art project in the company. You'd think a lamp factory would know what was safe.

Whose Utopia

The artist read an old book full of inventions about his own country Taiwan. He took the inventions seriously and translated them to our time. Or: how can you make a sensible installation with beautiful nonsense.

IFFR 2025
30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025