Serenghetti

For the Urban Screen project, the IFFR approached three film makers with whom the festival has close links. The Mexican director Carlos Reygadas is one of them. Since his ambitious and widely praised début film Japón was premièred in Rotterdam, his lyrical oeuvre has been shown at the festival. Reygadas (a great soccer fan) made a football film for his urban screen. The game between two women’s elevens takes place on a pitch in the middle of a surrealistic mountain landscape where corrosion has done its job. The game has all elements of a professional match as these are generally seen on TV: colourful club kits, camera recording from all possible angles, statistics, the score, slow motion repeats, a preview, interviews with the players etc. A greater contrast between the daunting mountain landscape and the clean urban façade on which this is screened is almost inconceivable. Add to that the mixture of two almost incompatible worlds – that of commercial football broadcasts on TV and the artistic cinema of Reygadas – and a special viewing experience is born.