IFFR 2016

José Luis Guerín

Linguist Pinto from Naples gives a course in 'being a muse' at the University of Barcelona. At home, Pinto's wife is not entirely convinced by his project - "regenerating the world through poetry". Pseudo-docu in Guerin's sparklingly intelligent style about the limitations of what art may be.

Signatures

L'Accademia delle Muse

Billy Woodberry

With detailed, personal anecdotes, rare archive material and beautiful poems in this jazzy documentary, L.A. Rebellion director Billy Woodberry creates a complex portrait of Bob Kaufman (1925-1986), a black American poet of the Beat Generation who has remained relatively unknown.

And When I Die I Won't Stay Dead

Franssou Prenant

Diary filmed on super8 shows how flexible memories are. Franssou Prenant returns to Algiers, where she lived as the wife of Madagascar's ambassador. Her musings become intertwined with those of twenty others. From this lyrical polyphony, a picture emerges of a city and a lifestyle that no longer exist.

Bienvenue à Madagascar

Arturo Ripstein

"Doesn’t experience count then", an old prostitute protests when banished to a street corner. Another whore catches her husband surreptitiously wearing her clothes. In this black-and-white film by maestro Ripstein, their world meets that of two masked wrestlers. How poverty makes people do things unintentionally.

La calle de la amargura

Edgar Pêra

Playful and very wayward - it is after all a film by Edgar Pêra - documentary essay about the viewer. Interviews with a variety of writers and thinkers about the nature of watching films is juxtaposed with staged 3-D action in cinemas and other spots where we now watch the moving image.

O espectador espantado

Grant Gee

Grant Gee's audiovisual love letter to the nights of Istanbul borrows its story from The Museum of Innocence, the name of both the book by Turkish Nobel prizewinner Orhan Pamuk and his musuem. An intimate documentary about tragic love, fading memories and a city that just keeps on going.

Innocence of Memories

Peter Schreiner

Two strangers cross paths on the Sicilian island of Lampedusa: a former refugee from Africa and a woman who escaped to the island to cope with a personal crisis. Memories, dreams and the present intersect and blend in this contemplative and visually arresting masterpiece by Austrian Peter Schreiner.

Lampedusa

Philippe Grandrieux

The term is used too often, but the stylish Malgré la nuit really is a Lynchian film, about loss and jealousy. Lenz returns to Paris in order to find his beloved Madeleine, but he only finds doomed relationships and a macabre, pornographic underworld from which he cannot escape. With Critic's Talk in Lantaren Venster Foyer on Sun 31 Jan.

Malgré la nuit

Alexander Mindadze

Can a budding friendship survive a fatal accident and a war? In this historic drama, the cautious bond between a German scientist and his Russian colleague in a Russian glass factory during World War II is put to the test. Ubiquitous and fierce emotions keep pace with dramatic events.

My Good Hans

Philippe Garrel

They seem like the perfect Parisian couple. But this is a film by Garrel and so affairs, jealousy and quarrels are never far off. An extra lover here, a little secret there; bit by bit this lively, romantic character study reveals the finesses of mutual infidelity. And of course, Garrel’s heart is with the woman.

L'ombre des femmes

Giuseppe M. Gaudino

The return of Gaudino (in 1997 Tiger winner with Giro di lune tra terre e mare) to fiction is also a monument to actress Valeria Golina, whose gripping portrayal won Best Actress in Venice. She plays the Neapolitan Anna, plagued by fears and setting herself aside, who seems to have forgotten she was once a brave child.

Per amor vostro

Khavn

Thirteen hours is quite something, and in this case certainly not only for the viewer. Filmmaker-poet-composer Khavn will accompany the film on the piano for its entire duration. A very special show that will easily make the Guinness Book of Records as the longest musical film accompaniment ever.

Simulacrum Tremendum

Lewis Klahr

Twelve cutout animations form a set of stories in which figures from Greek mythology and pulp novels of the 1960s meet in old advertising photos. Lewis Klahr worked for years on his collage world full of comic strip heroes, Roy Lichtenstein-like prints, film-noir themes and a clever soundscape.

Sixty Six

Ben Rivers

In a film as mysterious as its title suggests, Ben Rivers portrays making a film as an exhausting and endless odyssey. Even though Rivers' colleague, experimental filmmaker Oliver Laxe, has an even more intensive experience when he steps off the set of his own ambitious opus in the mountains of Morocco.

The Sky Trembles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers

Frank Scheffer

An intense portrait of the painter Robert Zandvliet that moves through his studio and his head. While the artist explains what interests him about a painting, we see him at work: mixing paints, stretching canvas, trying out different brushes, but above all being concentrated and busy at length.

De waarneming

John Gianvito

Wake (Subic) forms, together with Vapor Trail (IFFR 2010), a monumental essay that investigates the context of the poisoning around former American bases on the Philippines. In its sparkling multiformity, the film touches on a much larger story about the tragic consequences of unimpeded militarism, historic amnesia and colonial relationships.

IFFR 2025
30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025