Cities of Last Things

Dizzying drama revealing in three non-chronological parts over three decades what and who drove a man to his desperate act.

In Cities of Last Things, Malaysian film director Ho Wi Ding, whose feature debut, Pinoy Sunday (2009), was also screened at IFFR, tells in three non-chronological parts spanning three decades how a man came to his desperate act. The dystopian colours splash from the screen, the editing is brutal, the tone deceptively light.

Inner Landscape

Documentary about the creation of chamber opera Si Fan, composed for the Nieuw Ensemble in 2015 by Chinese composer Guo Wenjing.

Painstaking documentary about the creation of the chamber opera Si Fan ('yearnings of love'), composed in 2015 for the Nieuw Ensemble by Guo Wenjing, one of China’s most famous contemporary composers. Second part of Frank Scheffer’s tetralogy on the disappearance of musical traditions in an era of modernisation and globalisation.

"I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians"

Idealistic theatre-maker discovers that not everyone wants to be reminded of Romania’s kick-off of the Holocaust.

Why this mass murder though? It’s questions like this that theatre director Mariana has to fend off whilst working on a reconstruction of the events that led to the Romanian extermination of Jews in Odessa in 1941. Contemporary hero-worship and racism get in the way. Will Romanian audiences even want to see her outdoor play?

Rosie

A young Dublin family is having trouble finding temporary accommodation. From their car, they search desperately for a place to sleep.

When their landlord sells their home, Rosie and John Paul's world slowly shrinks back to their only possession, the car. While he works in the kitchen, she drives the children back and forth to school, meanwhile searching desperately for a place to sleep. Heartbreaking social-realistic drama, written by Roddy Doyle, with impressive acting performances.