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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Sami Blood
Amanda Kernell IFFR 2017 110′The full festival programme, including the film descriptions, trailers and schedule per day, will be available on 15 January 2020.
Keenly observed drama about the position of Sami – the Laps – in Sweden in the 1930s. In Sami Blood we see through the eyes of a 14-year-old Sami girl (compellingly played by Lene Cecilia Sparrok) how prejudice and racial stereotypes can be gruesome obstacles. Assured debut by half Sami, half Swedish Kernell. -
Jackie
Pablo Larraín IFFR 2017 91′The full festival programme, including the film descriptions, trailers and schedule per day, will be available on 15 January 2020.
“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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Asura: City of Madness
Kim Sungsoo IFFR 2017 136′The full festival programme, including the film descriptions, trailers and schedule per day, will be available on 15 January 2020.
Very hard Korean noir, in which it becomes clear that it’s better not to be too squeamish in local politics. A corrupt, populist mayor stops at nothing in his greedy renovation plans, while his accidental sidekick becomes increasingly stuck between the countless conflicting interests and his extremely ill wife.
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Burma Storybook
Petr Lom IFFR 2017 81′The full festival programme, including the film descriptions, trailers and schedule per day, will be available on 15 January 2020.
Poet and activist from Myanmar Maung Aung Pwint has spent large swathes of his life in prison. Now the country is free after 50 years of military dictatorship, he reminisces and struggles with painful memories. A poetic, loving documentary about a country reinventing itself.