Genre-bending genre films

Resurrected last festival edition after a ten-year hiatus, Rotterdämmerung puts forward an eclectic mix of genre films. Not just genre films however, each film is by a maker that seeks out the boundaries of genre and bends conventions to their will in their own way.

Audience, make sure to get your thrills with a dose of drama and genre this festival edition. Rotterdämmerung is the place where inimitable genre films come out with the guts and bag their glory. A highlight for IFFR 2019 is Elizabeth Sankey’s Romantic Comedy, in which our most-loved romcoms are torn apart and scrutinised for their unrealistic pictures of male-female relationships and white, heterosexual, middle-class characters. Why does the woman always have to be saved by a man?

Experience swords drawn in Tsukamoto Shinya’s Killing, a darkly violent take on the samurai (chambara) genre which asks us to consider the weight of each kill. While master filmmaker Zhang Yimoubrings a completely original cinematic style to his new martial arts epic Shadow.

Find a unique mix of Western and horror in The Wind by Emma Tammi. If you dare, go deeper into the night with Nightmare Cinema by Alejandro Brugues, a five-part horror story set in an abandoned cinema. Before breakfast it’s to the morgue with The Nightshifter by Dennison Ramalho, and then on to a trip to the sleepy Argentine town with the Lynchian monster film, Murder Me, Monster.

See if you can work out the whodunnit film Out of the Blue by Carol Morley nodding to the golden age of film noir, or the hard-to-define psychological thriller Monument by Jagoda Szelc.

See our full list of genre-benders below.

Confirmed films in Rotterdämmerung

• Harpoon, Rob Grant, 2019, Canada, 82’, world premiere

• Killing, Tsukamoto Shinya, 2018, Japan, 80’

• Murder Me, Monster, Alejandro Fadel, 2018, Argentina/France/Chile, 109’

• Shadow, Zhang Yimou, 2018, China, 116’

• Romantic Comedy, Elizabeth Sankey, 2019, United Kingdom, 79’

• The Wind, Emma Tammi, 2018, USA, 86’

• Monument, Jagoda Szelc, 2018, Poland, 108’

• Out of Blue, Carol Morley, 2018, United Kingdom, 110’

• The Nightshifter, Dennison Ramalho, 2018, Brazil, 110’

Watch the Rotterdämmerung collection on IFFR Unleashed