IFFR 2015

Daan Veldhuizen

When backpackers come to a small village in rural Laos, their arrival divides the local population and disrupts the relationship between two childhood friends. A complex East-meets-West story, told in a cinematographic language that is as rich as it is confrontational.

Bright Future Premieres

Banana Pancakes and the Children of Sticky Rice

Isabelle Tollenaere

Can a film be clinical and informative and yet also dreamy and mysterious? Of course, and a lot more besides. That much is apparent from the beautiful Battles, an observational essay that investigates the traces recent conflicts have left in the landscape and the people at four different sites in Europe.

Battles

Larissa Figueiredo

There’s a myth that suggests the ghost of the 16th-century Portuguese king Don Sebastiaan founded a magical kingdom on the island of Lençóis off the Brazilian coast after his defeat against the Moors. Five centuries later, a young Portuguese woman (and a small film crew) arrives there. The island is still enchanting.

The Bull

Marcin Dudziak

Father and son on a journey in the forest. Their trip through nature is an act of initiation for them both. What looks innocent and safe turns out to be dangerous and vicious. A beautifully shot meditation on first encounters with the world as it is.

Calling

Misawa Takuya

Whimsical film in which students and teachers come together during a weekend for a wedding. The film flutters back and forth between the various characters and their feelings until the wedding starts. Shot in the old beach hotel where the great Ozu wrote his screenplays.

Chigasaki Story

Philippe Fernandez

Maybe the 1960s, maybe the future. Seven astronauts wake up in a spaceship, not knowing where they have come from nor where they are heading. As the ship operates by itself, they have ample time to meditate, rather scientifically, on matter, life and the universe.

Cosmodrama

Miguel Llansó

A post-apocalyptic, Surrealist science-fiction romance from Ethiopia is not something you come across every day. The Spaniard Llansó who lives in Addis Ababa embroiders on his fascinating short film Chigger Ale and again finds Daniel Tadesse willing to play the lead.

Crumbs

Wang Haolin

Three stories and about love, fate, misunderstanding, desire and birthplace linked together by ingenious details. From the plains of in Mongolia to a hotel room in Beijing and back. A beautiful fiction debut by the maker of the award-winning The Land.

Erdos Rider

Margarita Manda

An ode to cinema as a sensation. A train thunders through a tunnel, seagulls screech above the water. An empty station, a bleak harbour and two lonely souls in a grey town. He’s an engine driver, she sells tickets for the ferry. He sees her every day in his train and is secretly in love. Is there hope for love in Athens?

Forever

Damian Marcano

Raw, realistic take on life in the eastern part of Port of Spain, Trinidad - murder capital of the Caribbean. Young Charlie wants to do the right thing, but has to try and survive this concrete jungle. Good and evil meet on a particular fateful night. Yellow Robin Award winner Curacao IFFR 2014.

God Loves the Fighter

Kris Kristinsson

Nineteen brides, scattered over four continents, run off on their wedding day. Dressed up in their wedding gowns they cross cities, industrial estates, inhospitable rocky outcrops, huge fields. Why? All attempts to explain this from different cultural backgrounds only served to increase the puzzle.

Hearts Know * the Runaway Brides

Daniel Aragão

After a period of rehab, the daughter of a politician in Recife has to reintegrate into society and adapt her behaviour to the wishes of her ambitious father. Propelled by a fantastic leading role from Bianca Joy Porte, Aragão's dynamic second film combines a retro-cool mood with contemporary anger. Nominated for The Big Screen Award

I Swear I'll Leave This Town

Kim Quy Bui

Unusual people live on inaccessible mountains in Vietnam. They are regularly the subject of documentaries and visited by tourists. This time, they act in a very imaginative, Surrealistic film. An old father demands that his handicapped son produce an heir. His nubile Daughter waits in vain for her turn.

The Inseminator

Roberto Anjari-Rossi

Grandparents can be much closer to grandchildren than their mothers or fathers. This is true of one family living in a small village in Chile. There are just two of them - aging grandmother and her young granddaughter. It's impossible to take our eyes off them. A film debut of unique tenderness and pure magic.

El legado

Evgeny Ruman

One night, one apartment and one mystery. Shir wakes up in the middle of the night. Her husband hasn’t come back after taking the dog out. The dog has. But where is Rami? Friends, relatives, neighbours and police come round and with each visit more marital secrets are revealed.

The Man in the Wall

Lee Kwangkuk

In his playful and humorous second film, Lee demonstrates his narrative talent, if only by not getting lost when he allows his characters (including pushy detectives and unemployed actors) to interpret each other’s dreams. Once again, we can describe the former assistant to Hong Sang-soo as his sorcerer’s apprentice. Nominated for The Big Screen Award

A Matter of Interpretation

Edmund Yeo

In commercials, Malaysia is heaven on earth. Palm trees, white beaches and clear blue seas. In that same country, an extremely polluting factory has been built on the coast. As a result, the romantic and unpolitical life at a local secondary school changes drastically. A contemporary environmental story.

River of Exploding Durians

Matthew Bate

Since 1977, Sam Klemke has been recording himself on film, the #selfieavantlalettre. In that same year, NASA launched the Voyager with the Golden Record. Whereas NASA primarily sketches a positive picture of humanity, Klemke's honest self portraits zoom in on the individual. A special film about time, memory and what it means to be human.

Sam Klemke's Time Machine

Kim Tae-Yong

Autobiographically inspired feature debut by one of South Korea’s greatest talents is an unusual coming-of-age film. A schoolboy who fled his irresponsible father as a child and grew up in a very Catholic foster family can no longer stay there because of his age. He pretends he wants to become a priest.

Set Me Free

Eddie Cahyono

It’s almost a genre: simple black-and-white films about poor young women who are forced to take the wrong path. Such as this sensitively filmed story about young mother and fisherman’s wife Siti. Her husband has been paralysed and that’s why she has two keep the family on her own. The karaoke bar beckons.

Siti

Joanna Lombardi

Four young people travel with a mobile cinema and flopped art-house film to remote villages in the jungles of Peru. Charming reflection on cinema, life, friendship and loneliness; beautifully shot by the brilliant Chilean Inti Briones. The world premiere of the second film by the maker of the successful Casadentro (2012).

Solos

Kivu Ruhorahoza

An unusual African film with a powerful visual narrative style and an experimental electronic score. The Aimless Wanderer of the title is a white man making an African travelogue. He meets a local girl who soon disappears. Little by little, fear and paranoia overcome him.

Things of the Aimless Wanderer

Félix Dufour-Laperrière

Documentary essay about life aboard a transatlantic freighter. A microcosm, in poetic black-and-white and with an allaying soundtrack, that not only reveals the vulnerability of people in the face of technology and nature, but also shows the everyday nature of this life, in which there is space on the open seas for an improvised game of cricket.

Transatlantique

Matthew Yeager

Ben is the typical Brooklyn hipster with his band, job and girlfriend. But is that all there is? Without any real reason or big drama, he goes off in a completely different direction. Ben switches from protagonist into passer-by, about whom his vague acquaintances only occasionally think. A striking portrait of this individualistic generation.

Valedictorian

Georg Tiller

An industrial film on two kinds of labour: socialist and capitalist. A poetic investigation of human relations with the soil and the Earth. A striking journey from Poland to Taiwan that makes us think, contemplate and dream. Pure film.

IFFR 2025
30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025