Posts Tagged ‘Rotterdam’

Wind, Talk to Me (2025) Rotterdam Film Festival 2025

Dir: Stefan Djordjevic | Serbia, 100′ 2025

Photographer, actor and filmmaker Stefan Djordjevic premieres his debut feature Wind, Talk To Me at this year’s IFFR, and makes a strong statement that indicates a fully formed vision that will make sure he is a name to watch in the future, touching the spiritual highs both of Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Andrei Tarkovsky, but creating something unique in its look at the grief after a parent’s death.

Originally Djordjevic had planned to make a film about his seriously ill mother, but following her inevitable passing he pivoted his focus to his family and his return to their pastoral holiday home in the Serbian countryside.

Before the sojourn to rural life he returns first to the family home to celebrate his Grandmother’s 80th birthday, where he reflects on his most recent path, his mother’s death and the breakup of his relationship. The male relationship with a mother figure has been documented many times before, Camus wrote in his novel The Fall of the inevitability of your mother’s grave, crying.

Juxtaposed against the filmmaker’s mother’s death is nature’s ability to regenerate, soothe, restore and continue. After accidentally hitting a dog with his car our protagonist seeks to atone by rescuing and healing the dog back to health.

When he eventually arrives in the country and to rural life, we acclimatise to a different pace and rhythm, which Djordjevic’s film embraces with the cinematic representation of time and memory, that Tarkvosky called a ‘mosaic made of time’. The film it probably most reminded me of, and is a spiritual cousin to, is the Sheffield Documentary Film Festival prize winner from Bosnia: The Door Of The House Who Will Come Knocking by Maja Novaković.

The film does lapse into the Serbian weakness for mystical nonsense, with the reading of tea leaves and the hope for physical healing through Reiki. This of course makes one think of convicted war criminal Radovan Karadžić, who, while on the run from the arms of The Hague, became an expert in ‘New Age’ alternative medicines.

The closing of the film features on a moving and beautiful conversation between mother and son, one of the many things she says is that “nature answers to miracles”, which is certainly different to how other filmmakers from Herzog to Von Trier look at nature, with their idea that nature is satan’s fortress.

With restraint and clarity, Djordjevic offers a delicate reflection on existence, discovering joy in fleeting moments and small gestures, even as despair lingers. A tender, honest reminder of the power of film and gives us very much an immersive experience and shows cinema’s singular power. D W Mault

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2025

John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office (2025) IFFR 2025

Dir: Michael Almereyda & Courtney Stephens
USA – 2025 – 89’

This new documentary is about neuroscientist John C Lilly and his pioneering work that led to startling and far-reaching discoveries despite the controversial nature of his methodology.

Director Courtney Stephens, probably best known for her recent award-winning drama Invention once again returns to her fact-based roots with fellow documentarian Michael Almereyda with this essayistic study of a time when America knew no bounds when it came to the realms of scientific experimentation.

The two filmmakers specialise in films that focus of the world of scientific experimentation and together they have mined the archives to cobble together photos and audio interviews, narrated by Chloë Sevigny, to show how John C Lilly was just one of a group of ground-breaking neuroscientists whose intrepid vision allowed them to go beyond the pale in the fields of psychology, ethnology, psychoanalysis, animal studies and psychedelic experimentation.

Lilly’s studies into animal language and awareness are particularly particularly interesting. Lilly embraced mysticism in an effort to go beyond the realms of hard facts and figures. NASA funded him to experiment with dolphins and LSD. Nowadays these studies are being undertaken again with dogs and other mammals who all have powers of communication, we just have to learn how to tune into their wavelengths to discover more, possibly by blending science with our own sensitivity and imagination. An exhilarating documentary.  @MeredithTaylor

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | February 3 2025

 

Blind Love (2025) IFFR 2025

Dir: Julian Chou | Drama, Taiwan – 2025 – 145’

Julian Chou’s sophomore feature, competing for this year’s Tiger Competition at Rotterdam International Film Festival, is a tender tale of complex family dynamics, societal pressures and suppressed desire in Taiwan, the first Asian country to legalise same sex marriage.

Shu-yi lives in an upmarket house with a successful surgeon husband whose only interest is her slim appearance and his patients. Family consists of an incontinent mother and rebellious medical student son Han who is expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. Overwhelmed by loneliness in her unhappy marriage Shu-yi re-kindles her connection with Xue-jin, a talented photographer, who is also attracted to Han.

The Taiwanese director sensitively explores the shifting dynamics between her characters in a film that deals with issues of gender identity in a refreshing way that shows how sexuality is often a moveable feast rather than just a fixed or binary state. Chou uses the film’s lengthy running time to flesh out these complex characters complemented by a gentle soundscape and Tamas Dobos’ subdued interiors and mellow visuals of Taiwan.

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL | TIGER COMP 2025

I Shall See (2025) IFFR 2025

Dir: Mercedes Stalenhof | Netherlands – 2025 – 96′

When BBC anchorman Frank Gardner became wheelchair bound after an accident at work he actually dreamt he could walk again – only to discover the terrible reality on waking.

In this sensual expressionist thriller a promising scuba diving champion suffers an incapacitating loss of sight, and discovers, just like Frank, that her mind is playing tricks after the life-changing injury.

But that’s not the only downside of the tragedy. Used to being physically active, both above and under water, 17-year-old Lot finds her life falling apart for many different reasons. Rehabilitation will not just involve extensive medical treatment but also a loss of control as she is forced to re-learn the most basic physicals movements in a special centre for the visually impaired.

This is a challenging role for lead Aiko Beemsterboer and one she tackles with impressive skill in navigating her new world. Two male members of the medical team aid in her recovery: one is Micha (Minne Koole), the other is Ed (Edward Stelder) who becomes a father-like figure. Britt Snell’s characterisation is full fleshed out even though the protagonists are visually rather hazy in order to reflect Lot’s experience and re-education. An impressionist soundscape and Mark Van Aller’s sensitive camerawork give us a palpable impression of what it’s like to be visually challenged. @MeredithTaylor

ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL 2025 |

 

Nina (2018) **

Dir.: Olga Chajdas; Cast: Julia Kijowska, Eliza Rycembel, Andrzej Konopka; Poland 2018, 122 min.

This hit and miss debut drama from Polish filmmaker Olga Chajdas struggles with an illogical narrative, despite some positive elements. 

French teacher Nina (Kijowska) desperately wants a child despite her failing marriage to Wotjek (Konopka), a car mechanic. In order to find the ideal surrogate mother the couple embark on a bizarre strategy: reversing their car into a prospective surrogate’s car, they then offer the victim a cost free repair at Wotjek’s garage and make a connection. And it’s during one of these ill-conceived escapades that Nina meets Magda (Rycembel), an airport security guard with an active lesbian sex life. Nina falls head over heels for the androgynous young woman but Wotjek, feeling left out, reacts with a violent assault on Magda. Nina then gets cold feet, after a confrontation with one of Madga’s ex-lovers with the whole debacle culminating in a positive conclusion. 

Strangely enough some of strongest scenes in NINA take place away from the central lesbian love affair. But while the lovers somehow lack a certain chemistry, Rycembel’s performance as the hot to trot initiator of the sensitive sexual encounter scenes has a lot going for it. And this is what makes Nina unique in spite of its hapless narrative. DoP Tomasz Naumiuk does a great job of recording the wild goings on with his mobile handheld images. There are also some extremely beautiful snowy landscapes.

At Rotterdam Film Festival 2018, where NINA won the VPRO Big Screen Award, Chajdas talked about the repressive new government and the lack of a gay club scene in Poland – so so she makes this a more colourful feature of her drama than reality permits.  AS

ON RELEASE AT SELECTED ARTHOUSE CINEMAS from 29 JANUARY 2019

Jonaki (2018) * * * * | Rotterdam International Film Festival

Dir.: Aditya Vikram Sengupta; Cast: Lolita Chatterjee, Ratnabali Bhattacharjee, Sumanto Chattopadhyay, Jim Sarbh; India/France/Singapore 2018, 97’.

Director/writer Aditya Vikram Sengupta follows his impressive debut Labour of Love with another love story set in a decaying world after the British left India and featuring a great comeback from 81 year old actress Lolita Chatterjee in the title role. Elliptical structure JONAKI (meaning firefly in Bengali) incorporates episodes from the life of beloved grandmother whose arranged marriage at the age of sixteen ruined her life.

Lying on her deathbed in hospital, Jonaki is lost in memories recalling the love her life, a young Christian man (Sarbh) she was forbidden to see by her strict mother (Bhattacharjee) and father (Chattopadhyay). Her parents want her to marry a rich man who runs his own business, and owns a local cinema. During British rule, Kolkata was made the capital of the “Jewel in the Crown”, that lead to the Indian upper classes in the city becoming quite wealthy: The magnificent locations featured in the film now look like a mixture of Buñuel’s Viridiana and Mrs. Havisham’s mansion in Great Expectations. But the old glory is gradually falling into decay, and Jonaki feels imprisoned in her home. Sengupta acts as his own DoP, creating ethereal and otherworldly images underlined by a unusual casting choices: Jonaki’s parents seem to be the same age as she was in her teens and early adulthood – whilst she is now eighty, and is criticised and often punished by much younger protagonists. Only her lover is the same age as she is, accentuating their spiritual bond.

There is a surreal and eerie quality running through this distinctive drama: In the dormitory of a girl’s Christian boarding school, the girls’ sleeping patterns sleep are synchronised, we also come across an orange-loving scientist who dreams of England and grows a horn on his forehead, which he later burns off. The local cinema is destroyed by fire, and is then replaced by a modern version – without seating. In the boarding school, oranges roll out of the rooms into the corridor; Sengupta partitions these rooms with glass walls and coloured windows, to allow the action to unfold simultaneously. At one point, we see poor Jonaki listening to her parents discussing her difficult behaviour in a room next door.

Jonaki falls between genres; the  viewer is drawn in and memerised by the ravishing images, the continuously changing lights and shadows. The episodic narrative is stringent, working like memory itself – meandering, reminiscing, leaving threads and picking them up again later. Sengupta offers his own cinematic vision, unique in todays’s so often predictable film landscape – and is all the better for it.AS

WORLD PREMIERE AT ROTTERDAM INTERNATIONAL  FESTIVAL UNTIL 4 FEBRUARY 2018

https://youtu.be/QqPfx7IZ8NU

 

 

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