IFFR KINO: RTM Night

IFFR KINO returns for its eighth season, with a screening and side programme the first Wednesday of each month, from October 2023 to January 2024. First up is the RTM Night: A night of resurfacing hope, on Wednesday 4 October at 21.00.

To celebrate hope: that was the aim of our 2023 RTM curators when they put together this special selection of films. The energy that has the power to flow from despair to lightness, isolation to connection, panic to acceptance and disaster to regrowth. The screening of the films Deeply, Madly (2022), The Disaster Cannot Be Contained (2022), Fin. Finito. Infinito. (2022), and Waka nanga mi (2023) will be accompanied by a spoken word performance as well as a conversation with the filmmakers on the influence of poetry in their work.

Deeply, Madly by Helen Anna Flanagan

A woman contemplates her fear of falling. Because everything falls: cigarette ash, people in funny videos and eventually, gravity even pulls our skin downwards. All we can do is let ourselves be carried along by the waves. Until they too, break and fall – as in a Hokusai print. – CB

The Disaster Cannot Be Contained كان يمكن أن لا أكون by Diana Al-Halabi

Disaster struck Beirut in 2020: the city was damaged by the biggest non-nuclear explosion in history, resulting in hundreds of victims. Filmmaker Diana Al-Halabi has a love of ports and has worked in the port of Beirut in the past. She draws a poetic parallel between the harbour of Rotterdam, where she was when she heard about the explosion, and that of Beirut. The blast hit Beirut at its core, but the stories reach much further. – CB

Fin. Finito. Infinito. by Laurence Henriquez

A planet is facing its end; its star is about to extinguish. People are behaving strangely, cities are deserted and the rich are holing up in bunkers, while others congregate on the beach to watch the drama unfold. Fin. Finito. Infinito. was shot on Lanzarote, during a masterclass taught by the legendary Werner Herzog. The Spanish island helped filmmaker Laurence Henriquez bring out the alien – both in the people and in the landscapes. – CB

Waka nanga mi by Evani Gilds

Vacillating between past and present, we observe Ewald at home. While his mother was hoping for a better future, he left everything behind to move to a new country. At home, he longs for the things he abandoned and turns to what he knows: his inner world. He focuses on his work as a watchmaker, while his past keeps veering into the present. – CB

Wednesday 4 October, 21.00, KINO Rotterdam

Get your tickets via KINO Rotterdam