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30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025

RTM 2025: introducing our curators 

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On Friday 31 January 2025, IFFR’s annual RTM Day takes place at LantarenVenster, spotlighting the very best in Rotterdam filmmaking alongside a host of talent from the city’s creative scene, presenting talks, music, audiovisual art and installations. Following the success of the previous two years of collaborating with curators for RTM, three new local creatives are shaping the programme at IFFR 2025. 

Janilda Bartolomeu

“As a lifelong Rotterdammer and RTM curator, I look forward to showing the work of Rotterdam filmmakers with idiosyncratic lenses to the open public of this unique city. In these times of confluent uncertainties, it fascinates me to bring together films that reflect on issues, communities and other entities woven into the impressive web of Rotterdam and the world around it.”

 “In these times of confluent uncertainties, it fascinates me to bring together films that reflect on issues, communities and other entities woven into the impressive web of Rotterdam and the world around it.”

Janilda Bartolomeu is a researcher, filmmaker and film programmer based in Rotterdam. Her practice moves in the realm of intangible heritage, (post) colonial spectralities and speculations. Through her fascination with time, her work takes the form of diasporic cinema and film installations. Her approaches are relational in nature and poetic in expression. Her lens deliberately retreats from the extractive values of documentation and focuses instead on projecting alternatives – on activating possibilities. Currently, her main research focuses on the Cape Verdean diaspora, their intangible heritage and the archipelago they have cultivated globally. Bartolomeu has collaborations with The New Institute, EYE Film Museum, RAW Material Company and the Walk & Talk Biennial.

Marlyn van Erp

“Turbulent times call for makers with guts, resilience and ambition. And you can find those in Rotterdam! As RTM curator, I can shine the spotlight on them and their stories. Rotterdam filmmakers and their films reflect the resilience and beauty the city bears. Freedom is an important theme: freedom to be yourself, escape obstacles, but also the freedom as a maker to tread unbeaten paths, break rules or choose different narratives. I can look at film from a technical point of view if I have to, but always let my feelings speak. Does it touch me?”

“Turbulent times call for makers with guts, resilience and ambition. And you can find those in Rotterdam!”

Marlyn van Erp bounced into Rotterdam at the age of 17 and instantly fell in love with the city. She is now a Rotterdam-based, genre-bending screenwriter and filmmaker. Graduated from the Willem de Kooning with a subsequent MA in interactive media. After walking the documentary path for some time, she turned to fiction and graduated from the Script Academy on screenplay.

Two shorts premiered in 2024: Burners directed by Aulona Fetahaj (Nizar el Manouzi, New Producers Academy) and HET LIGT AAN MIJ directed by Abid Chand, (Lavender Films and BIND), which is currently touring the Netherlands. She is working on several series, the short Jackpot and horror feature 11/11, among others. ‘I prefer to make films (or series) within arenas or communities that we didn’t yet know existed in this way. Stories of unforeseen heroes rising up that are based as much on fact as fiction. The ordinary that becomes unusual, or the unusual that actually becomes ordinary. That moves me.’

Zalán Szakács

“With my contribution to IFFR’s RTM programme, I would like to focus on experimental filmmaking and sci-fi documentary formats. These two unique categories really struck my attention during the selection procedure and I would love to share with a diverse audience.”

“With my contribution to IFFR’s RTM programme, I would like to focus on experimental filmmaking and sci-fi documentary formats.” 

Zalán Szakács is an artist who brings together immersive art, scenography and media theory Research. Through his work, Szakács explores the relationship between space, body and technology, resulting in multi-sensory experiences that include elements such as light, sound, smell, tactility and movement. Szakács’ art installations invite the viewer on a mystical journey where reality and fiction intertwine. Attuned to both the individual and collective experience, it evokes a deeper awareness of the body in space and is capable of transporting the viewer to another place and time. He has been exhibiting, performing, and screening at CTM Festival (DE), MUTEK MX (MX), Ars Electronica Festival (AUT), International Film Festival Rotterdam (NL), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (NL), Het Nieuwe Instituut (NL), V2_Lab for the Unstable Media (NL), Kunsthaus Graz (AUT), MU Hybrid Art House (NL), Instrument Inventors Initiative (NL), TENT Rotterdam (NL), Zsolnay Light Festival (HU), and Light Art Museum Budapest (HU), among other places. Szakács is a core teacher at Utrecht University of Arts and an affiliated researcher at Utrecht University.

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