IFFR 2003

Guy Maddin

This ecstatic and moving melo-noir-drama is inhabited by amnesiacs, who are plagued by obsessions, mustard-gas attacks or both. Maddin also treats the viewer to a very original strangulation scene with intestines.

Guy Maddin focus

Archangel

This over-the-top melodrama about two quarrelling families in an Alpine town has many peaks. Two butlers in training hate their mother and a lonely count hatches a plot to win back his true love.

Careful

One long peep is enough to to see this unique and naughty installation. Each of the ten peepholes is filled with action and heated moments of violence and carnivorous sexuality.

Cowards Bend the Knee

The short visits that a deceased patriarch pays to his family are especially hard to bear for the eldest son.

The Dead Father

Maddin's dizzying - but true to life - ballet version of Bram Stoker's book is a strange mix of Michael Jackson's Thriller and Carl Dreyer's Vampyr. Filled with Victorian gothic and skillfully choreographed dance.

DRACULA - Pages from a Virgin's Diary

Silent, surreal film about drunken sailors hunting women, based on a kitsch opera aria.

Fancy, Fancy Being Rich

Noam Gonick

Film maker Noam Gonick spent fifteen months following the ups and downs in the set of Guy Maddin's Twilight of the Ice Nymphs and completed a light-hearted documentary full of film fragments and personal expressions. With a voice-over by Tom Waits.

Guy Maddin: Waiting for Twilight

A riveting 'montage of attractions' of the styles of silent cinema; two clans fighting for a throbbing heart. Produced for the Toronto Film Festival 1999.

The Heart of the World

An impressionist series of images, inspired by Tales From the Gimli Hospital.

Hospital Fragment

Music video, made for the American band Sparklehorse.

It's a Wonderful Life

As the plague rages through the idyllic toen of Gimli, the patients Einar and Gunnar find out that both of them have made love to Gunnar's deceased wife. Apart from necrophilia, Maddin's feature début comprises homo-eroticism and moments of self-hatred about his Icelandic heritage.

Tales from the Gimli Hospital

Two steam-train drivers, father and son, are after a girl; she leaves with a Zeppelin pilot.

The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Towards Infinity

In the underground Mandragor, the sun never sets and the population of six focus on obtuse romantic entanglements. This elegant fairytale is Maddin's most decadent film so far.

IFFR 2025
30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025