The Limelight programme section gives an overview of international award winners, festival favourites and remarkable films that will screen in Dutch cinemas after the festival. For example, the poetic, committed documentary Burma Storybook (the Netherlands, 2017) by filmmaker Petr Lom will have its world première this edition. With the award-winning Sieranevada, Cristi Puiu has created an impressive, darkly comical sketch of the family and friends of a person who has died, meeting for a dinner. A whirlwind of themes, frustrations and arguments tears through the apartment where the film is set. The Hubert Bals Fund supported the mystical Wolf and Sheep (Afghanistan, 2016) by filmmaker Shahrbanoo Sadat, which deals with old traditions, customs and stories that are still a vital component of a small shepherding community in the mountains of Afghanistan.
Films in ‘Limelight’
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Câini
Bogdan Mirică IFFR 2017 104′A man inherits a property from his grandfather and discovers the latter was a crime lord. The late grandfather’s accomplices are not ready to give up the property. A moody, tense mix of Western, thriller and Romanian New Wave.
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Jackie
Pablo Larraín IFFR 2017 91′“I won’t let you write that down”, Jackie says to her interviewer, a slight smile playing across her face, after getting too personal. However, we see it all, in this first English-language film by Chilean master Pablo Larraín, about Jackie Kennedy in the days after JFK’s assassination. The widely lauded Natalie Portman puts in an intense and intimate performance in the title role.
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Daphne
Peter Mackie Burns IFFR 2017 90′Daphne is 31, too young to settle, too old to live aimlessly. Long nights, drink and a variety of lovers form a welcome distraction from the question: what do I want? An unexpected event forces her slowly but surely to confront her life. A confrontation with herself is inevitable.
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Knife in the Clear Water
Wang Xuebo IFFR 2017 93′In the remote hills of Ningxia, old Ma Zishan lives with his family, who are Islamic Hui Chinese. in line with custom, the family want to sacrifice it’s only bull for the ceremony marking the death of Ma's wife. But both Ma and the bull have other ideas in this beautifully made melancholy fable.