13 Bombs
Two cryptocurrency geeks collaborate with intelligence agents to defeat anti-bank militants in a high-octane thriller.
140'
Indonesia
IFFR 2024
The two defining tendencies of Tamil-language cinema of the past decade – sociopolitical critique and post-modern cinephilia – collide head on in Karthik Subbaraj’s dazzling crime comedy Jigarthanda Double X, a spiritual successor to Cold Heart (IFFR 2018). Where the prequel was a celebration of the supremacy of cinematic mythmaking, the new film is an earnest, impassioned assertion of the importance of cinematic demystification.
Like its predecessor, Jigarthanda Double X devilishly dispatches a sheep into a den of wolves. Coerced by a police officer to assassinate a ruthless, Clint Eastwood-loving gangster named Caesar, timid prisoner Kirubai assumes the guise of a filmmaker – a protégé of Satyajit Ray, no less – to lure his target with dreams of celluloid stardom and subsequently ambush him. Kirubai and Caesar embark on a movie project together, but they soon find their fictions overwhelmed by the weight of reality.
Every shot is an event in Subbaraj’s unabashedly maximalist film, brimming with character doubles, symmetries, repetitions and reversals. With its heady soundtrack, emphatic visual palette and labyrinthine dramatic progression, Jigarthanda Double X takes the viewer on a dizzying roller-coaster trip – featuring movie stars and mountain tribes, elephants and evil poachers – that has to be experienced to be believed.
– Srikanth Srinivasan
Jigarthanda Double X also screens at Pathé de Kuip:
Thursday 1 February at 16.00, €12.50
IFFR 2024
Programme IFFR 2024
Avant-premieres and cinematic highlights of this year’s festival circuit: eagerly anticipated audience favourites and international award-winners.
Read more about this programmeTwo cryptocurrency geeks collaborate with intelligence agents to defeat anti-bank militants in a high-octane thriller.
140'
Indonesia
IFFR 2024
Featuring an all-star cast, Stefano Sollima's Adagio narrates the clash between different generations of criminals.
126'
Italy
IFFR 2024
This science fiction melodrama with an impeccable Léa Seydoux in the main role jumps between past lives, each haunted by love.
146'
France
IFFR 2024