Limelight lineup 2021

Limelight features the year’s arthouse highlights and a preview for theatrical releases. The February lineup includes 12 Limelight titles, also featuring the world premieres of Mitra by Kaweh Modiri and Dead & Beautiful by David Verbeek, both by Dutch filmmakers. We have also announced the 50th-anniversary opening film: the international premiere of absurdist tragicomedy Riders of Justice by Danish filmmaker Anders Thomas Jensen, starring Mads Mikkelsen.

Still: Beginning

Still: Dead & Beautiful

Still: Dear Comrades!

Still: First Cow

Still: Mandibules

Still: Mitra

Still: La nuit des rois

Still: Quo vadis, Aida?

Still: Riders of Justice

Still: Shorta

Still: Suzanna Andler

Still: Sweat

Limelight lineup

• Beginning, Dea Kulumbegashvili, France/Georgia, 2020, Dutch premiere
  Jehovah’s Witness Yana refuses to be oppressed any longer by her husband, church and the police, leading her to commit the ultimate act of resistance against patriarchal society.
  
• Dead & Beautiful, David Verbeek, Netherlands/Taiwan, 2021, world premiere
  After a weird night, five super-rich friends find out they are vampires. Panic! Is this really what they have become?
  
• Dear Comrades!, Andrei Konchalovsky, Russia, 2020, Dutch premiere
  A workers’ strike is violently put down by Soviet troops in this current, urgent historical drama by master director Konchalovsky.
  
• First Cow, Kelly Reichardt, USA, 2020, Dutch premiere
  Beautiful, thoughtful western focusing on friendship rather than strife. And on the diversity of the American frontier around 1820.
  
• Mandibules, Quentin Dupieux, France, 2020, Dutch premiere
  Two easily-distracted layabouts find a Labrador-sized fly in this new film from master absurdist Dupieux.
  
• Mitra, Kaweh Modiri, Netherlands/Germany/Denmark, 2021, world premiere
  A traumatised mother gets the opportunity to avenge her daughter’s execution in Iran. Is her victim really the perpetrator?
  
• La nuit des rois, Philippe Lacôte, France/Côte d'Ivoire/Canada, 2020, Dutch premiere
  The power of storytelling underpins this stifling, inventive film from Côte d’Ivoire about life inside a gigantic prison.
  
• Quo vadis, Aida?, Jasmila Žbanić, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2020, Dutch premiere
  Bosnian UN interpreter Aida is trapped between factions in this moving, urgent drama about the genocide in Srebrenica in 1995.
  
• Riders of Justice, Anders Thomas Jensen, Denmark, 2020, international premiere
  Act of revenge devised by grumpy widower (Mads Mikkelsen) gets out of hand – with therapeutic consequences. Bittersweet, absurdist tragicomedy.
  
• Shorta, Anders Ølholm/Frederik Louis Hviid, Denmark, 2020, Dutch premiere
  When a tense, deprived Copenhagen neighbourhood violently explodes, two cops have to save their own skins.
  
• Suzanna Andler, Benoît Jacquot, France, 2020, international premiere
  Effective, minimalist, supremely French film adaptation of a play by Marguerite Duras about a wealthy woman (Charlotte Gainsbourg) receiving her lover.
  
• Sweat, Magnus von Horn, Poland, 2020, international premiere
  Psychological drama about fitness influencer Sylwia, who is forced to adjust her perfect impression of herself after encountering a stalker.

See IFFR 2021’s February film lineup here