IFFR 2015

Roh Gyeong-Tae

Artist/filmmaker Roh has an impressively sombre world view; based on the sad fate of a Filipino-Korean family, he shows a decayed society where it’s impossible to distinguish between material and immaterial pollution. Those who can cope with this are rewarded with moments of mercy and magic.

Spectrum Premieres

Black Stone

Olaf de Fleur Johannesson

A crime sequel from Iceland, which also works without its predecessor (City State). Unambitious detective wants to kill two birds with one stone: unmask his corrupt boss and dismantle a drugs organisation. Atmospheric, cleverly written, well acted and surprising right up to the end.

Brave Men's Blood

Zhang Miaoyan

With elegant camera movements in apt black-and-white, cameraman/writer/director Zhang enchants the viewer: a gripping phantasmagoria of modern slavery, opium pushers and youth gangs in an apocalyptic China, where a poor kid from the countryside goes looking for his mother.

A Corner of Heaven

Khavn

What can a family do if someone disappears in a dictatorship? You can’t go to the police for help or information. Many families were affected in this way by the cruelty of the Marcos dictatorship (1972-1986). The film shows one of them as an example of paradise lost.

Desaparadiso

Bruno Safadi

Ricardo Pretti

A joy for the eyes and ears, this high-point of the Brazilian trilogy Operation Sonia Silk. A dreamy making-of about the two other episodes and also a cinematographic essay (in picture, text, sound and music) about cinema and filmmaking and, above all, about love.

The End of an Age

Midi Z

A fascinating documentary, shot in the mountainous north of Burma. No filmmaker is welcome there, because, against the background of a civil war, the jade miners enter the deserted mines illegally. With the aid of filming locals, however, Midi Z was able to compile this portrait. Getting rich quick turns out to be hard and risky work.

Jade Miners

Michael Noer

An old woman (a wonderful Gita Nørby) in the autumn of her life falls in love with a man who is not her husband. This time, the director of realistic dramas about the seamy side of Danish society (R., Northwest) doesn’t show any violence or wrongs, but maintains his gripping and honest gaze. Nominated for The Big Screen Award

Key House Mirror

Yamashita Nobuhiro

He is very famous in Japan, the singer in red from Kanjani Eight. Here, Subaru plays a small-scale gangster who’s lost his memory and is helped by a girl who just by chance happens to be the manager of a band. Comedy with music, craziness, melancholy and love.

La La La at Rock Bottom

Li Luo

As with everything in life, the same goes for East Lake, a threatened lake near the expanding mega city of Wuhan. You can get worked up about it and get involved - or you can think, it won’t affect me. Fortunately there’s the intriguing new film by Li Luo, which brings to an end these doubts.

Li Wen at East Lake

Jang Kun-Jae

In his third feature (in two parts), festival favourite Jang Kun-Jae also presents an alter ego: a Korean director who, in black-and-white, prepares a co-production in a remote area of Japan. The second half shows the results in colour: a moving retrospective of a possible love between a guide and a female Korean visitor.

A Midsummer's Fantasia

Dré Didderiëns

Rob Krikke (33) has Down’s syndrome and is an actor with a theatre company. Since his sister died in an accident, that event won’t let go of Rob anymore. A decision is taken to make a play about her death. Documentary maker Didderiëns follows this process closely, shunning neither poetry nor confrontation.

Mijn witte hemd

James Benning

In 54 static shots, Benning provides a picture of the Natural History Museum in Vienna. With the exception of the first three shots, he chooses areas that are normally closed to the public: offices, store rooms and empty corridors. A characteristically meditative Benning, even though this time he chooses to stay indoors.

natural history

Alain Cavalier

A meditation on life and death and an associative self-portrait, all in one: in Le paradis, Alain Cavalier threads together everyday observations, memories and a motley collection of objects and stories from his personal inventory and turns them into a salutation to life. A film against forgetting.

Le paradis

Ju Anqi

In all its simplicity, a completely unique film, shot more than 10 years ago and only now edited. A poet sets off on a ‘business trip’ through inhospitable Xinjiang. The physically exhausting trip provides an existential brothel visit, bumping on bad roads and a glimpse of a disappearing world, but also 16 melancholy poems.

Poet on a Business Trip

Jacopo Quadri

Documentary follows the experimental drama course given by the old Italian theatre and opera legend Lucio Ronconi every summer in a remote corner of Umbria, where young, dedicated acting talent rehearse several plays. Fascinating.

La scuola d'estate

Woo Ming Jin

In a small fishing village in Malaysia, it’s not easy to keep anything hidden. Yet the village chief has kept a great secret throughout his life: he had a relationship with a man who disappeared one day. The village chief then starts a quest that brings back many events from the past.

The Second Life of Thieves

Nathan Silver

The fragile harmony of a sober commune is cruelly disrupted by the arrival of Ann. The paranoia and drug relapse she causes result in destructive chaos. With admirably controlled improvisations, Silver creates an idiosyncratic film that leaves a deep impression.

Stinking Heaven

Ando Hiroshi

A female student falls for a senior, but the senior not really for her. He is willing to go to bed with her, but doesn’t feel love. The couple embark on a painful yet passionate experiment. A 1970s story in 1970s images, based on the legendary book by the then very young writer Kei Nakazawa. Nominated for The Big Screen Award

Undulant Fever

Peter van Houten

Beautiful, poetic documentary portrait of an aged Dutch pastor who - probably as the very last one - watches over the spiritual life of about 25 villages in the French Pyrenees and does so with an unprecedented vivacity, sincerity and sensitivity for female beauty. Long, but very infectious.

La vie de Jean-Marie

Catarina Mourão

Every family has its secrets, the family of Portuguese filmmaker Mourão included. As the granddaughter of the well-known writer Tomaz de Figueiredo, she picks apart several of them in an intimate yet universally meaningful way. As such, her film also becomes a portrait of dictatorship and resistance and of the urge to create art.

IFFR 2025
30 Jan – 9 Feb 2025