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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Porto
Gabe Klinger IFFR 2017 76′Memories are hard to pin down in this hyper-romantic, melancholy ode to love. Actor Anton Yelchin, who died in 2016, and actress and model Lucie Lucas philosophise and make love in picturesque Porto. Featuring delightfully melancholy music. Attentive film-lovers will notice the varied and meaningful use of film formats.
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My Father's Choice
Yuen Yan Ting IFFR 2017 79′Her father fled Mao's Cultural Revolution, going to Hong Kong. Not long after, he joined the great Chinese exodus to the West and started a restaurant in Maastricht. But was his personal story really so closely interwoven with the history of China, Yan Ting Yuen wonders in this family portrait.
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King of the Belgians
Peter Brosens, Jessica Woodworth IFFR 2017 94′Widely praised Belgian mockumentary and road movie by IFFR regulars Brosens and Woodworth. A Belgian king hears during a state visit to Turkey that Wallonia has become independent. What follows is a hilarious journey by the king and his entourage through the Balkans, reflecting all possible (cultural) clichés.
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Tramontane
Vatche Boulghourjian IFFR 2017 105′Moving, ingenious and musical narrative about life after war. When his band is to perform in Europe, blind Lebanese musician Rabih has to get a passport. This leads to a quest for his roots in a country where the civil war has left a trail of lies and loss. Who is really blind here?