International Film Festival Rotterdam
Vera Brozzoni reports from the Dutch showcase for ‘peripheral’ cinema.

The 36th edition of the IFFR closed on 4th February after ten days of screenings. Ireland was represented only by Civic Life, a series of seven short films by Dubliners Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy. All seven episodes were shot in one long take and represent apparently normal everyday situations that go terribly wrong or disclose unexpected revelations. A surreal feel and twisted humour give way to a deeper sympathy for the non-professional cast of these short films. The most emotional episode, ‘Moore Street’, is named after the famous street in Dublin where it was shot, while the others take place in various places in England. Generally speaking, the 36th edition of the IFFR has proved once more to be the most important showcase in Europe for ‘peripheral’ cinema from the four corners of the world. Romantic drama Love Conquers All by Malaysian Tan Chui Mui conquered one of the coveted VPRO Tiger Awards: ‘Classical in style and structure, it is a film which speaks to the heart’, stated the five-person jury. The film is a subtle and merciless apologue about love and deceit, innocence and experience, told using a discreet yet powerful language – family life scenes, close-ups of the back of the excellent protagonists, and a surprisingly bitter end.

The jury has also awarded a Tiger to Pia Marais’ The Unpolished, a German generational Bildungsroman, ‘for its nuanced portrayal of a young girl trying to find meaning in a society that has lost all sense of direction’. Two other polemical and strong films were unusually granted an ex aequo Tiger Award and will split the standard prize of €10,000: the first is Brazilian Bog of Beasts by Cláudio Assis, a recognition of the cruel female condition in Brazil, praised for its ‘crudeness, energy and visual strength’; the second is Danish political satire AFR by Morten Hartz Kaplers, that explores the relationship between media and politics, reality and fiction. Each Tiger Award comes with a guaranteed broadcast by Dutch public television network VPRO, the best way to bring art films to the public – but funnily enough, the KPN Audience Award went to German Oscar-runner The Life of Others by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, a solid example of good old storytelling. Although at times the female protagonist’s motivations are not that clear, the film makes a highly moving and compelling quality show with a heart and, most of all, a brain.

As for the other awards: NETPAC (Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema) chose Hirosue Hiroyama’s tense psychological drama Fourteen; FIPRESCI selected Rafa Cortes’s Yo for its depiction of one man’s struggle to acquire an identity; KNF (the jury of Dutch film critics) chose Nina Davenport’s Operation Filmmaker because ‘the director is constantly challenging herself and the viewer to reconsider Western opinions on cultural differences’, according to the KNF jury.

Like every year, the program was extremely rich and offered many World and European Premieres: Build a Ship, Sail to Sadness was the most interesting and experimental flick from UK, about a youth who dreams to bring a mobile disco to a village in Scotland; Squatterpunk (Philippines) by Khavn de la Cruz, a rough and tough yet full-of-humour documentary about the kids who live in the slums of Manila – the last screening of the film boasted the live accompaniment of Khavn’s punk band The Brockas (named after Lino Brocka, Filipino pioneer filmmaker): an exciting event that will stay in the memory of the audience.

Also from Asia came the uncompromising Strawberry Shortcakes (Japan), telling the stories of four very different women and their struggle to overcome loneliness. Cheol-hie Park’s No Mercy for the Rude (South Korea) once more proves Korean directors’ craft at genre-bending – by now a genre in its own right. Gangster story, horror and family drama are soaked in a bath of crazy humour that recalls Joon-Hwan Jang’s Save the Green Planet! (the two share excellent lead actor Ha-kyun Shin). After This Our Exile by Hong-Kong director-editor Patrick Tam is a heart-wrenching father-son drama with stunning photography and moving characters, but the strangest (and most shocking) object that landed in Rotterdam was Faceless Things by young Korean Kyung-Mook Kim, a study of angst and sadomasochism in two parts, the second involving scatological sex games – enough to polarize the audience, enough to make this festival unforgettable and unmissable. 

International Film Festival Rotterdam – Official Site