Rotterdam goes hardcore genre, with an eclectic mix of films that brashly bend, blend or respect conventions, each in their own distinctive way.

IFFR 2020

Ninian Doff

A group of half-stoned teenagers find out they are being hunted in this crazy comedy full of bizarre plot twists.

Four teenagers think they're setting off on a dull hike across the Highlands, but soon find out they are the quarry in a bizarre hunt. Half-stoned and hallucinating, they see bullets fly around their ears in this crazy comedy that kicks off in top gear.

Voices

Rotterdämmerung

Boyz in the Wood

Kim Seungwoo

Korean thriller in which a mother is confronted with the secrets of a local fishing community as she searches for her missing son.

Yoonsu is still missing after six years when an anonymous caller assures his desperate mother Jungyeon that her son is living in a remote fishing village. She comes face-to-face with the local fishermen's gruesome secrets. An enthralling thriller full of twists, as can only be made in Korea.

Bring Me Home

Artemio Narro

Zany road movie in which Mexico's political history is almost rewritten by two tripping stoners.

An acid trip informs Diego and Gael that Mexican presidential candidate Colosio will be assassinated in three days' time. It's up to the dorky duo to save him so they can be heroes. Political reality inventively intertwined with mythology in this idiosyncratic, colourful road movie.

ColOZio

John Hsu

China's occupation of Taiwan takes on nightmarish logic in this psychological horror film.

In 1962's Chinese-occupied Taiwan, political literature is severely prohibited. This psychological horror film based on a popular, eponymous computer game is about the disappearance of the members of an illegal book club from a secondary school. One spooky night, two teens go in search of the horrific truth.

Detention

David Perrault

Beautiful French feminist western about choosing your own course in life and gradually weaning yourself off (toxic) men.

In this beautifully shot French western, a couple and their three daughters decide to return to Paris from snowbound Missouri during the American Civil War. Guiding them on their fraught journey is tormented ex-mercenary Victor, who has caught the eye of rebellious daughter Esther.

L'état sauvage

Miike Takashi

A boxer and a call girl become embroiled in a failed drug deal. Explosions, black humour and screaming Yakuza: Miike Takashi at his very best!

Genre master Miike Takashi returns to his first love, characteristic of his 1990s career – Yakuza films. This contemporary take includes the usual explosive elements: talented, yet ill boxer Leo and call girl Monica become embroiled in a failed drug deal between local gangsters and a Chinese triad.

First Love

Ulrich Thomsen

Dry, layered comedy about Trump's racist America in which a bipolar, German sausage maker wants to open a restaurant in small-town America.

Bipolar, German sausage maker Edward starts his own high-end sausage restaurant in small town America. Everyone loves it except the sheriff. He wants a hotdog not a Frankfurter. A bone-dry, layered comedy about Trump's racist America.

Gutterbee

Joko Anwar

Maya had imagined the return to her Javanese birthplace quite differently. Indonesian horror thriller replete with mystery, bloodletting and wayang puppets.

Indonesian horror film about mysticism, wayang puppets, a hellish village history in Java and the young woman held responsible for it. When 25-year old Maya returns to the village of her birth, the inhabitants prove to want her dead, as they think this will lift the curse.

Impetigore

Lijo Jose Pellissery

When a water buffalo escapes in an Indian village, the men wildly hunt it down. What is ultimately the difference between man and beast?

An escaped water buffalo leaves a trail of havoc through an Indian village, prompting the male villagers to set out on a wild hunt. Rising levels of adrenaline and testosterone cause tempers to fray, and the differences between man and beast become ever more blurred.

Jallikattu

Mattie Do

Ingenious mix of sci-fi and ghost story: a time-travelling Laotian finds out that undoing his childhood trauma leads to unexpected consequences.

If you change the past, you change the future, as an old Laotian finds out when a ghost gives him the chance to travel back in time to his youth. In this ingenious mix of lo-fi sci-fi and melancholy ghost story, undoing the tragic event that has pressed on him for decades has unexpected consequences.

The Long Walk

Rose Glass

Nurse Maud masks trauma with devotion, setting out in this slow-burning horror to save her patient's soul.

Young nurse Maud not only takes care of the bodily ills of her incurable patient, former dancer Amanda, but also sets out to save her soul. In this slow-burn horror, it gradually transpires that Maud's devotion is a fragile mask for her own traumas.

Saint Maud

Ueda Shinichiro

An extraordinary acting job leads anti-hero Kazuto to perform deeds he had never imagined possible in this charming comedy.

A money-grubbing cult involved in rice balls, a charming young damsel in distress and an improbable dork-hero who faints every time someone looks at him. How on earth can that end well? If only Rescueman were here! Sympathic absurdity from the maker of the unexpected cult hit <strong>One Cut of the Dead</strong>.

IFFR 2025
30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025