IFFR 2016

Charlie Kaufman

Duke Johnson

Fantastic, unusually realistic, stop-motion animation by the maker of Synecdoche, New York. Everyone looks the same. At a soulless business hotel, a run-down author of customer service books sees a single exception. A psychologically nuanced, tender meeting - including the best sex scene at IFFR 2016.

ID: The Generic Self

Anomalisa

Jem Cohen

Two women lost in the vastness of global culture. One is a corporate worker sent to research the amusement park industry. The other is an outsider working and living in a shopping mall. A hypnotic and disturbing investigation of the contemporary world as an artificial desert where everything is the same. Not only malls, hotels and theme parks but also humans.

Chain

Vahid Hakimzadeh

A disengaged Japanese couple living in a design house. A Lithuanian wrestler who works in Japan and feels like an outsider there. An Iranian architect who wanders through the streets of Tokyo. Greater Things beautifully explores a special feeling when you fall out of yourself and start to be someone else and live somewhere in between.

Greater Things

Jia Zhangke

1999, 2014 and 2025 provide the historic and futuristic backdrops for Jia Zhangke’s ambitious take on the open wound of feelings that hardly matter anymore and the selling off of the Chinese identity in the Delicious New World. "Has anyone got a plaster?" someone once asked in Jia's The World. No, being the answer.

Mountains May Depart

Todd Haynes

An affluent woman (Julianne Moore) lives in a Californian mansion and one day starts to be heavily allergic to everything that surrounds her. Is it an unknown disease or a deep personal crisis caused by her seemingly perfect lifestyle? An enigmatic Todd Haynes masterpiece and a crucial film on construction and loss of identity in a modern world.

Safe

Fukada Koji

Japan after the nuclear disaster. A lonely girl is waiting for the evacuation together with her only friend, a female android that is almost indistinguishable from a human being. A touching, subtle and visually brilliant film on displacement, alienation and the nature of emotions. Moreover, it features the most charming android ever played by a real android! Nominated for the VPRO Big Screen Award.

Sayonara

Athina Rachel Tsangari

Petra Going is a migrant cyborg. Every day she goes to a new city to collect other people's memories while being deprived of memories herself. Set in different locations across the globe, this striking debut by Athina Rachel Tsangari is a multi-genre story about alienation, understanding of home and the relationship between men and women.

The Slow Business of Going

Yang Zhengfan

Like any futuristic megacity, Hong Kong is certainly a dream place but does not it steal our dreams and identities? Making a spectacular trip through its locations, we encounter different people who literally become invisible trying not to fall down from this 'top of the world'. A fascinating road movie and a profound anthropological essay.

Where Are You Going

Daniel Hoesl

Four allegedly professional investors travel the globe in search of established companies they want to buy for nothing. Surprisingly, plenty of respected businessmen are willing to place themselves into their hands. A sharp satire on contemporary capitalism and its agents, who are as sterile and interchangeable as the money they trust. With Critics' Talk in LantarenVenster Foyer on Fri 5 Jan.

WINWIN

Claire Simon

Le Bois de Vincennes is a safe harbour for many Parisians. Migrants and natives, prostitutes and stalkers, rich and poor, old and young, downshifters and loners come to this forest in search of themselves and find there an escape from the metropolis. A delicate and profound portrait of a contemporary man and his desperate search for an 'unknown homeland'.

IFFR 2025
30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025