IFFR 2006

Gary Tarn

The painter Hugues de Montalembert lost his sight in the prime of life as a result of a brutal attack. He talks about his life. Composer Tarn portrays his life, starting with the soundtrack, resulting in a moving comic intelligent and inspiring meditation on the observation that vision is a creative deed and not perception.

Vita Brevis

Black Sun

Vincent Gérard

Cédric Laty

Outstanding, creative quest for - and analysis of - life and work of the photographer (and videomaker, artist and musician) William Eggleston, the godfather of modern colour photography who has been a major influence on many film makers. This slightly eccentric Southern gentleman usually keeps his mouth firmly shut, but the French makers did not need very much text to make a fascinating film about the man who `is at war with the obvious'.

By The Ways, A Journey With William Eggleston

Mario Martone

Caravaggio in Naples. Then and now. Neapolitan Martone makes a beautiful visual poem about the years that Caravaggio spent in his city after being found guilty of manslaughter in Rome.

Caravaggio, The Last Act

Mike Hoolboom

Metabiopic about the Canadian pioneer of the video scene and icon of the drag scene Colin Campbell who died in 2001. And therefore also about the development of television, the Cold War and the shadow of a master.

Fascination

Nathalie Alonso Casale

A film about oblivion, illusions, memory, history and progress, the everyday drudge and Russian cinema, silence and standing still. And about the sounds of Mr Edgar Figner, the last Gerauschmacher working for Lenfilm in St Petersburg, and his family.

Figner, the End of a Silent Century

Riri Riza

One of the most ambitious films ever made in Indonesia is a biographical epic based on the posthumous diaries of the legendary journalist and activist Soe Hok Gie (1942-1969), who remained critical in the complex years of Suharto and during the rise of Sukarno. Via the inspired young rebel, the surprisingly topical film also provides a beautiful sketch of Jakarta in the 1960s.

George Clooney

Meticulously designed and committed lack &amp; white drama about the 1950s confrontation between the Communist hunting Senator Joseph E. McCarthy and the rather boring news icon of CBS, Edward R. Murrow: the only one who kept his eyes on the facts during a period ruled by fear. Director Clooney plays the producer, McCarthy is himself...

Good Night, and Good Luck.

Kees Hin

About the life and work of the Dutch painter Jaap Hillenius, akin to George Seurat, who died in a car crash in 1999. The film is made up of three films projected side by side: in the middle the work of Hillenius in chronological order; right his everyday life, left the portrayal of his world of ideas, reason. But as always in life, reason and feeling get mixed up.

Jaap Hillenius, poging om dichterbij te komen

Raúl Ruiz

A virtuoso homage to an artist and his life, the film is set against the rich historical tapestry of the fin de siècle. Screening of the director's version.

Klimt (director's cut)

Krzysztof Krauze

Nikifor was a Polish naive painter, here played by the fantastic eight-year-old Theatre actress (!) Feldman. The prize-winning film describes his adventures in the last years of his life, in communist Poland in the 1960s when Nikifor meets the would-be painter and apparatchik Wlosinsksi, who recognises his genius.

My Nikifor

Sonia Herman Dolz

Film portrait of the Spanish visual artist Dora Dolz, made by her daughter, sketches a picture of the possibilities of taking your life and your faith in your own hands.

Portrait of Dora Dolz

Harutyun Khachatryan

Khachatryan, Armenia's greatest film maker, triumphs as a director with a beautiful homage to Jivani: In 19th-century national poet and travelling singer. But also in a filmic way he records the state of affairs in his country, accompanied by a beautiful soundtrack.

Return of the Poet

David Ballerini

A Czech actor beautifully plays the role of hunger strike and IRA member Bobby Sands in a furious, stylised, baroque debut film by a young Italian. In order to make it clear that he is not so much interested in the British-Irish conflict, but in the universal portrayal of the battle against cruelty, torture and the dehumanisation of prisoners.

Il silenzio dell'Allodola

Alexander Sokurov

In Sokurov's series about 20th-century tyrants, this time crucial days from the life of Emperor Hirohito, just before and after the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II. Issey Ogata is phenomenal as the Emperor who looks and acts like Chaplin, the soundtrack is in experience and the special effects are especially beautiful. And the film is occasionally funny too to top it all.

The Sun

Michael Almereyda

Almereyda, who has directed Nadia and Hamlet, made her beautiful portrait of the legendary 'father of modern colour photography', William Eggleston - basically at the same time as his French colleagues Laty and Gerard. To totally different films in which Eggleston remains the enigmatic middle, even when we see him at work. How can someone turned ordinary snapshots of everyday, common objects into emotionally charged and significant photographs?

IFFR 2025
30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025