Daily Tiger #3 (English)

DAILY TIGER 44th International Film Festival Rotterdam #3 Saturday 24 January 2015

4

IFFR Live launches Meet the Film Office Van Ewijk’s Sleep.

Signals: Really? Really!

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ScreenDaily: Belgian festival cancelled New role for Hannewijk Dutch production rises photo: Bram Belloni

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Tiger world premieres: La mujer de los perros / Dog Lady Norfolk

ENGLISH EDITION

Daan Veldhuizen, director of world premiere in Bright Future Banana Pancakes and the Children of Sticky Rice and Ju Anqi, director of Poet on a Business Trip, with poet Shu, the protagonist of Ju’s unique, Hubert Bals Fund-supported film , shot ten years ago, world premiering in Spectrum, at the Meet & Greet in de Doelen yesterday.

The Next Generation The 15th edition of the Rotterdam Lab, IFFR’s fiveday programme aimed at nurturing a new generation of producers, kicks off today. Melanie Goodfellow reports

“We’ve got 58 participants this year, which is about the right number.

That way the participants get closer. Some great collaborations came out of the Lab in the past,” says Rotterdam Lab coordinator Nienke Poelsma.

The attendees are nominated by the Lab’s international partners, which range from the Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP) in New York to Colombia’s PROIMAGENES and the UK’s Creative Skillset. “We have 30 partners all over the world, which makes for a really nice mix in the group,” says Poelsma. “This year, we’ve got three new partners: South Africa’s Association for Transformation in Film and Television (ATFT), the Swedish Film Institute and the UK’s Northern Film & Media.”

Packed programme

Participants this year include Brooklyn-based Sara Murphy, whose previous credits include Land Ho!; British James Cotton, who is working on a TV adaptation of Tony Collins’ 1980s thriller Open Verdict, having produced his first feature Powder Room in 2013; Dutch Wout Conijn, who is currently developing David Verbeek’s next project, It’s Mine, and Brazilian Tatiana Leite, who is working on new fi lms by Julia Murat and Lucía Puenzo.

“The participants in the Rotterdam Lab are emerging producers, who should have produced at least one or two short fi lms and one feature fi lm.

This is to make sure that the level of the group is balanced and that the producers are more or less at the same stage of building their careers. We

advise them to come with a project in development, but it’s not compulsory and we don’t monitor it any way, but it helps them get more out of the event,” explains Poelsma.

A packed programme awaits them, including a case study by Italian producer Carlo Cresto-Dina on co-producing Alice Rohrwacher’s Cannes Grand Prix winner Le meraviglie, which was at CineMart in 2012, as well as a seminar on fi lm financing by Paul Miller, the former head of finance at the Doha Film Institute. There will also be talks on micro-budget fi lmmaking by Serbian Ognjen Glavovic, who will use the example of his medium-length fi lm Zivan Makes a Punk Festival, screening in IFFR’s As Long As It Takes: Short & Mid-Length selection. “He made it for a really tiny budget,” says Poelsma.

Industry veteran Bettina Brokemper, the founding chief of Cologne-based Heimatfi lm, will give advice on company management and philosophy.

Her company produced Christoph Hochhäusler’s The Lies of the Victors, which is screening at IFFR in the Critics’ Choice selection.

Hot dates

Poelsma notes, however, that the real value of the Lab goes beyond the programme. “The most important element for the participants is that they are amongst the industry. They are invited to all the CineMart functions, the breakfasts, lunches and dinners. The networking opportunities are the most valuable aspect,” she says. “Rotterdam is one of the most accessible festivals there is. Berlin and Cannes are so big it can be hard to know where to start for a producer at the beginning of his or her career.” To further encourage meetings, the Lab also organises Speed Dating sessions with more established industry experts.

INDUSTRY CLUB EXPERT PANELS

Today the Industry Club presents two expert panels on the 4th floor of de Doelen: SHORT FILM & ARTISTS’ MOVING IMAGES IN THE MEDIA (11 am to 12.30 pm) and THE DIRECTOR-PRODUCER PARTNERSHIP: A CREATIVE COLLABORATION (4 pm to 5.30 pm). The panels are open to all festival guests.

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM

Hot dates this year include UK producer Dominic Buchanan of Stink, whose credits include Lilting and King Jack; digital distribution expert Wendy Bernfeld; Meinholf Zurhorst, head of the Arte fi lm department of ZDF, and Nicole Mackey, EVP International Sales at Fortissimo Films.

Illustrious alumni

This year’s Lab intake joins a select and illustrious club. Past participants include Swedish Erik Hemmendorff, Indian producer Guneet Monga, Hong Kong-based Melissa Lee, Unafi lm’s Titus Kreyenberg and Malaysian Sharon Gan. “Guneet Monga was at the Lab in 2011 and came back to Rotterdam in 2012 with Ritesh Batra to present The Lunchbox in CineMart in 2012, which then went to Cannes in 2013,” says Poelsma. “We’ve really seen some great producers coming through.”

Hemmendorff, who attended in 2006, is the producer of Ruben Ostlund’s alpine family drama Turist, screening in IFFR’s Limelight section after premiering in Un Certain Regard in Cannes last year. Gan also returns with Liew Seng Tat’s rural comedy Men who Save the World, which screens in Bright Future.

The upcoming editions of Sundance and the Berlinale are also peppered with past attendees. James Tayler is a producer on Ugandan director Donald Mugisha’s Boda Boda which is due to premiere in the Berlinale’s Forum. Nick Case, who attended in 2013, heads to Sundance this year as executive producer of Matt Sobel’s coming-of-age tale Take Me to the River, and Andrea Roa will head to Park City as producer of Cobie Smulders’s Unexpected. The Lab may be an intimate affair, but it’s reach extends far.

TIGER ALERT

Prepare for your trip to IFFR with the Tiger Alert Pro newsletter with all the latest industry news. Sign up at www.iffr.com/professionals.

Wings over Europe

That’s so surreal

By Nick Cunningham

The festival spreads its wings across Europe this evening with the launch of IFFR Live, a partnership with Fortissimo Films, TrustNordisk, Doc & Film and KPN. Kicking off with the European premiere of Atlantic. (Jan-Willem van Ewijk), four further films will be screened simultaneously to 40 cinemas across the Netherlands and eight other European countries, as well as on VOD. The other films are all world premieres and screen on consecutive evenings. Erbarme Dich – Matthäus Passion Stories by Dutch director Ramón Gieling is about the psychological effects of Bach’s masterwork.

Melody (Bernard Bellefroid, Belgium) concerns the relationship between a surrogate mother and the woman for whom she has agreed to conceive a child. Danish Niels Arden Oplev’s Speed Walking is a bitter-sweet coming-of-age comedy about 14-year-old Martin. Distrify Media will release the films on VOD in all participating territories outside Benelux and Spain immediately after each screening. Filmin will release the films on VOD in Spain. Meanwhile Dutch director Marinus Groothof’s The Sky Above Us, which examines the lives of Belgrade citizens during the NATO bombings of 1999, will be released on VOD in the Netherlands by KPN.

By Nick Cunningham

Olaf Möller is a hard man to track down. The curator of the Signals: Really? Really! Programme, focusing on Surrealism, is not keen on emails and he doesn’t own a telephone – not even a lobster-shaped one. What’s more he doesn’t really want to talk about the films.

He’d prefer, as the phrase goes, to let the films speak for themselves. But he offers up a statement that he requests is repeated until the end of this article.

“Final Flesh,” he says, “is the greatest work of art in cinema ever made and explains everything you will ever need to know about life. Everybody needs to see

The Sky Above Us

“I think it is great and exciting and the whole programme is being backed financially by Creative Europe [one of whose stated aims during its 2014-2020 term is enhanced audience development],” comments festival director Rutger Wolfson. “European lawmakers are thinking very hard about what they can do to improve the climate for distribution of European films.

What makes it nice is that IFFR Live is a new type of

collaboration between the festival and sales agents.”

Fortissimo Films’ Nelleke Driessen expressed her pride at the choice of Atlantic., for which she is handling international sales, as the IFFR Live opener, and stressed the importance of such an initiative presented in tandem with the VOD platforms. “It is new and we don’t know exactly what the results will be, but you have to take these risks,” she stresses. “It is necessary.”

Ich seh, Ich seh (Goodnight Mommy)

Film Office: Open for Business

Final Flesh and I actually have a particular agreement with Satan himself that everybody who does not see Final Flesh will go to a very, very special place in Hell that is created for people who did not watch Final Flesh. God Bless You. End of story. Repeat.”

Preliminaries over, however, Möller has a change of heart and decides to explain the origins of his programme. “When I was in Venice, I saw that five of the most outstanding films could directly connect with 1920s Surrealist practice and theory.” These were Roy Andersson’s A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Contemplating Existence; Quentin Depieux’s Reality, Belluscone. Una storia siciliana by Franco Maresco;

Filmmakers in IFFR selection are advised to visit the 3rd floor of de Doelen where Film Office staff will look to connect them with attending distributors, financiers and sales agents – or any other party with a potential interest in them or their films. A bank of film experts are on hand to offer 30-minute consultancies; the Industry Club offers an intimate and informal meeting place to discuss future collaborations, and full details of distribution rights and sales availability are easily accessible. On top of that, the festival selection can be viewed in digitized format at the Video Library, or streamed to laptop. And to cap it all, a detailed industry programme of events, panel sessions and master classes will attempt to answer the questions, or assuage the fears, of fledgling and experienced filmmakers alike.

Two of the Industry Club expert panels will address the role of the producer. Today two director/producer teams will assess creative collaboration (4 pm) while tomorrow morning’s panel (handily entitled The Producer) discusses the necessity of working with a professional producer. “A lot of filmmakers here in Rotterdam arrive with their first feature that they have probably produced themselves,” explains Film Office Co-ordinator Nikolas Montaldi. “They may have had friends working with them – and now they probably want to do something bigger and they need a creative producer, but they don’t know anybody who matches their talent or knows what they actually want to achieve. Which is where we can help. The panels come out of the things that we observe.”

Film Office consultant Hayet Benkara explains the dilemma that filmmakers currently face. “In the

photo: Corrine de Korver

By Nick Cunningham

Final Flesh The Film Office Team: Myrthe Terpstra, Pierre Menahem, Mary Davies, Hayet Benkara, Nicholas Montaldi, Marina Kozul

past everything was so clear, so linear. Writing, development, production, distribution, sales, festival, exhibition – everybody had a specific hat on. Now it’s like this [she waves her hands in the air] – and then you have to think about the audience. The lines are really blurred. These days you have more than one production recipe, and the outcome can be anything

and everything. The films can go to a festival or not go to a festival, it can be VOD or not VOD, someone will say this film can never be made and three years later it wins Cannes, but you might have difficulties finding a distributor and/or an audience. That’s the difficulty today: where do you start and how? So that’s why you can come here, and we will help you to strategize!”

Van Ewijk develops US-set Sleep.

Van Ewijk’s latest film, Atlantic., about a young Moroccan man who attempts to wind-surf to Europe, opens the IFFR Live programme this evening. The director describes his new picture as a story of loss with a Sixth Sense twist, set against the backdrop of contemporary America and hinging round the country’s gun culture.

“It’s a trip the father always wanted to give his daughter for her birthday,” explains Van Ewijk. “During the day he shows her America but at night something strange happens. He leaves her and breaks into people’s homes to watch their children sleep. “Guns and gun culture play a large role throughout their trip. They meet a lot of people with guns. Slowly the truth of the situation emerges,” he continues.

For now, van Ewijk envisages the protagonist as a Dutch man who has emigrated to the US, but says this may change in development. “The immigrant angle is important. It’s about someone whose dream

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photo: Felix Kalkmam

Dutch filmmaker Jan-Willem van Ewijk is developing a US-set feature, Sleep., following a father and his teenage daughter as they travel through from the Mid-West to California. By Melanie Goodfellow

it was to move to America, but then goes through something incredibly traumatic there,” he says.

In spite of the sombre twist to the story, Van Ewijk says he wants the film to have the dark humorous

feel of his 2006 debut feature Nu. about a couple who have been separated by a mysterious accident.

“Critics wrote that it had a poignant sense of humour.

I lost that a bit with Atlantic. and would like to get it back,” says Van Ewijk. “I’m looking for something in the vein of the Coen’s Fargo.”

The director, who grew up in California before moving back to the Netherlands, says the film has an autobiographical side drawing on his own “love-hate relationship with America” as well as the loss of a sister from illness.

Jan van der Zanden and Ineke Kanters at Amsterdam-based production Waterland Film are producing the film. The company’s recent credits include Boudewijn Koole’s Kauwboy and it also co-produced Martin Reitman’s Dos disparos, screening in IFFR’s Limelight section.

“I’ve also received a lot of support from the Sundance Lab which helped develop Atlantic. Once you’ve been there they look after you for life. They suggested quite a few potential US partners,” says Van Ewijk.

The Netherlands Film Festival has given development support. Savage Films in Belgium and Fabian Massah’s Endorphine in Germany have signed letters of intent to co-produce the film.

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM

Ich seh, Ich seh (Goodnight Mommy) by Veronika Franz and lrich Seidl’s In the Basement. “The question was therefore, if you have five of these films at the same moment, and if you have already noticed that all over the world there seems to be a resurgence of interest in Surrealist cinema, or Surrealist art in general, then you begin to wonder, what does it mean?”

So these films, with the exception of Seidl’s In the Basement, became the “kernel” of his programme – four films which, Möller argues, “demand” the presence of the 35 others. “I have a film in the programme by Giulio Questi (Lola), who is one of the great Italian maverick auteurs of the post-war period, who actually out of sheer boredom as a senior citizen started to make amateur films because he had nothing better to do. Then, you have Bruno Sukrow (Anna), who is really a retired 80-something citizen of Aachen who, also out of boredom and because his wife had died, God knows why he got interested in doing animations for Second Life.

“This type of stuff I found really interesting. And then you basically get into certain textures, you have the ultra-rough cheap, consumer-level video quality of something like Boris Ivkovic (Big Rocks), another amateur. And then you have the really absolute glacial perfection of Roy Andersson.

“So you try and see how you get from one point to another, and what I hope to achieve with this programme is that it becomes its own little cosmos, that there is a whole, that when you watch all the films that it all makes sense.”

RECTIFICATION

Terence Nance is competing in the Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films with Swimming in Your Skin Again, celebrating female spirituality in and around Miami, and not An Oversimplication of Her Beauty as stated in Friday’s edition of the Daily Tiger.

Dog Days

Darklands

By Tina Poglajen

By Harriet Warman

Walking a fine line between portraying freedom in absolutes and finding an excuse for being left to fend for oneself, Argentinian La mujer de los perros (Dog Lady) is a rare portrayal of an anti-heroic, marginalised female protagonist. Directors Laura Citarella and Verónica Llinás build their poetic story divided into the four seasons of the year around a character far from spectacular. “Cinema favours stories about characters transcending mere existence. Classical narrative needs heroes and villains; huge victories and massive failures.

It may be more difficult to care about narratives of everyday men and women leaving behind them no trace of their existence,” Llinás explains.

In writer/director Martin Radich’s Norfolk, screening in the Hivos Tiger Awards Competition, a nameless man (Denis Menochet) – a mercenary – lives an almost solitary life in a run-down farm house in the titular region. Aside from his son (Barry Keoghan), the only contact he welcomes from the world beyond is via six TVs arranged on chairs, transmitting the news and entertainment of the day. An apparently self-imposed isolation is explained by a dream he describes to his son, the meaning of which seems to be: if we try to help each other, we will just hate each other in the end.

Norfolk’s pessimistic outlook is emphasised by an aesthetic that imbues the eastern English countryside with dread. Using a palette of colours along the spectrum of gloom and dirt – ochre, brown, impenetrably dark blue – Radich and cinematographer Tim Siddel present us with a locale that’s neither wholly past nor present. This is a place where loss hangs in the air, the characters seeming to carry their ghosts with them as though hope is a luxury they can’t afford. Having worked extensively as a cinematographer, Radich admits he was perhaps unusually particular about finding the right person to achieve his vision of a timeless Norfolk: “I wanted to find someone who wasn’t part of that London advertising aesthetic – someone who had the same philosophical outlook as me.’’ On working with Siddel, Radich describes this as “a joy”, the pair utilising in-camera techniques for ethereal soft focus, and a “children’s camera” to allow for spontaneity on set. Melding different shooting formats was important in achieving the right texture for the film, says Radich: “If you’re going to be committed to an idea, just commit.”

At the centre of Norfolk is Menochet’s striking performance as the mercenary, tasked with one more kill that will threaten his son’s future happiness. Whilst writing

Citarella fixes the camera’s gaze on her object intently, watching her sleep, eat, interact with the environment familiar to her and the inner city – at times hostile and at other times ridiculous in its busyness and sense of self-importance. “We tried to manipulate reality as little as possible, to let it present itself in its own way. Long takes were ideal for this – they allowed for capturing the surroundings naturally, with as little interference as possible.”

Besides that, working with so many animals on set must have been a challenge. “During the process of making the film, we, together with cinematographer Soledad Rodriguez, realised that we needed to show the character from head to toe and give her plenty of space. In fact, we wanted the space itself to be a character. This was also simply needed for all of the dogs. They would follow her wherever she went. We couldn’t let them out of the camera’s sight. While Verónica was acting, the dogs were of course just there, running around. Nothing could ever be more honest than that.”

La mujer de los perros manages to maintain the perfect distance to relate the story: it keeps the spectator far enough away not to become melodramatic, nor is it ever at such an ironic remove that the portrayal of marginalisation is in danger of patronising the character. In Llinás’s words, “She chooses to live her life as she does to the same degree that anyone does.

The border between choice and necessity is rarely, if ever, well-defined.”

“creating the story from inside the narrative” So why should we? According to Llinás, “There is an immense freedom coming from the fact you are nothing, no one.” The titular Dog Lady (played

by Llinás) is a voluntary outcast (or so it seems), living on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, sharing her food, shelter and days with a motley pack of dogs.

Renowned Argentine actress Llinás is the creative force behind the portrayal of this unique character, while Citarella handled the technical side of directing. “She was in front of the camera all of the time, I was behind it,” says Citarella. “She was creating the story from inside the narrative. That was key for our working together.”

La mujer de los perros / Dog Lady Hivos Tiger Awards Competition Sat 24 Jan 09:30 DWBZ (P&I); Sat 24 Jan 19:15 PA7; Sun 25 Jan 12:30 PA3; Mon 26 Jan 20:00 DWBZ (P&I);

Tue 27 Jan

22:15 PA3; Thu 29 Jan 12:30 LV5; Sat 31 Jan 11:45 CI2

the screenplay, Radich imagined a ritual enacted by the character before commencing his deadly missions.

Whilst shooting, the director allowed Menochet to interpret these sequences in whatever way he felt: “We did no rehearsals, he just did what he did and it was very, very powerful.” Without discussing with Radich

“If you’re going to be committed to an idea, just commit” the connection he would draw upon for the performance, Menochet’s gestures in the resulting scenes evoke a deep rage. The director feels these are “an indication of how dedicated he was to the character.”

Norfolk’s deadly serious tone is broken by moments of odd humour in the performances, playing with the timelessness of the whole piece. Despite the mercenary’s economical attitude to communication, punctuated by allegorical lessons and statements about moral relativity, his gravitas is countered by a logical self-awareness on the part of his son, and Keoghan delivers his lines with a straightforward approach that re-situates the action in the present. Radich says this incongruity was essential to the film: “the intention was always to have a bit of humour in this dark place.”

Norfolk Hivos Tiger Awards Competition PA4 Sat 24 Jan 18:45; PA3 Sun 25 Jan 15:30; Mon 26 Jan 18:00 (P&I) DWBZ; Tue 27 Jan 17:00 LV5; PA4 Fri 30 Jan 15:30; CI2 Sat 31 Jan 22:15

PRESS & INDUSTRY SCREENINGS 09.00

10.00

de Doelen Jurriaanse Zaal

Screenings 2

TG La mujer de

los perros

Laura Citarella / Verónica Llinás 09:30 – 11:05

13.00

14.00

15.00

16.00

BF The Bull Larissa Figueiredo 14:30 – 15:48

SP The End of an Age Bruno Safadi / Ricardo Pretti 11:45 – 12:58

LL Erbarme dich

– Matthäus Passion Stories

Ramón Gieling 14:00 – 15:35

17.00

18.00

19.00

20.00

21.00

22.00

23.00

24.00

TG Bridgend Jeppe Rønde 16:45 – 18:24 RR Final Flesh Vernon Chatman 16:00 – 17:12

BF Cosmodrama Philippe Fernandez 10:00 – 11:45

Pathé 3

TG Haruko’s Paranormal Laboratory Lisa Takeba 10:00 – 11:16

Pathé 5

Cinerama 4

12.00

TG Videophilia (and Other Viral Syndromes) Juan Daniel F. Molero 12:00 – 13:43

combined programme 10:00 – 11:20

de Doelen Willem Burger Zaal

Cinerama 2

11.00

SH DINAMO P&I

EP Bitter Lake Adam Curtis 09:15 – 11:30 WF The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes Nancy Andrews 09:00 – 10:16

BF Hearts Know * the BF Magical Girl Runaway Brides Carlos Vermut Kris Kristinsson 12:15 – 14:22 10:45 – 11:57

09:30

SH

DINAMO (Distribution Network of Artists’ Moving Image Organizations) distributors show recently acquired work. These titles can also be seen in IFFR’s video library during the festival.

RG Mobilisierung der Träume Reinhart / Tode / Luksch 16:15 – 17:40

Videophilia (and Other Viral Syndromes) [wp]

TG

•oranje01•

Laura Citarella / Verónica Llinás, Argentina, 2015, DCP, 95 min, Spanish, e.s.

Cinerama 2

Internet cafés and slackers, not-soinnocent schoolgirls and amateur porn using Google Glass, Mayans and the end of the world, acid trips and guinea pigs as extras in an exorcism: things in Lima, the Peruvian capital, are pretty similar to contemporary reality, virtual or otherwise, in the rest of the world.

14:30

BF

•geel•

Larissa Figueiredo, Brazil, 2015, DCP, 78 min, Portuguese, e.s.

There’s a myth that suggests the ghost of the 16th-century Portuguese king Don Sebastiaan founded a magical kingdom on the island of Lençóis off the Brazilian coast after his defeat against the Moors.

Five centuries later, a young Portuguese woman (and a small film crew) arrives there. The island is still enchanting.

TG

Over a 5-year period in Bridgend in Wales, 79 people, many of them teenagers, committed suicide without leaving any clue as to why. This is the starting point for Danish Rønde’s feature debut - an atmospheric, at times mysterious social drama. Hannah Murray convinces as the ‘new girl in town’.

•oranje01•

The End of an Age [ip]

SP

•paars01•

LL

TG

RR

•blauw•

Britain, USA, Russia. All invaded Afghanistan and created a solid, corrupted view of a country that still traps politicians and people around the globe.

Unravelling the complex relationships between Afghanistan and the West, BBC-journalist Curtis goes further and creates a fascinating epic about our incapability of understanding the history itself.

Self-portrait of a Dutiful Daughter [wp] Ana Lungu, Romania, 2015, DCP, 81 min, Romanian, e.s.

BF

•geel•

Whimsical film in which students and teachers come together during a weekend for a wedding. The film flutters back and forth between the various characters and their feelings until the wedding starts. Shot in the old beach hotel where the great Ozu wrote his screenplays.

Set Me Free [ep]

WF

•blauw•

Cristiana is thirty and from a classically bourgeois family. She works on her PhD, meets friends and has an affair with a married man. When her parents move, leaving the parental home to her, she goes after what she wants: a dog. Intimate, personal observation of puberty at the age of 30.

Kim Tae-Yong, South Korea, 2014, DCP, 108 min, Korean, e.s.

BF

•geel•

Autobiographically inspired feature debut by one of South Korea’s greatest talents is an unusual coming-of-age film.

A schoolboy who fled his irresponsible father as a child and grew up in a very Catholic foster family can no longer stay there because of his age. He pretends he wants to become a priest.

Vernon Chatman (the voice of South Park’s Towely) wrote a screenplay in four chapters about the end of days, which he sent to internet porn production outfits which made it, each company using its own in-house talents. Cinema’s greatest contribution to the Surrealist cause since the demise of Buñuel. A masterpiece of the outrageous.

10:45 •blauw•

18:00

The Inseminator [ep]

•geel•

Nineteen brides, scattered over four continents, run off on their wedding day. Dressed up in their wedding gowns they cross cities, industrial estates, inhospitable rocky outcrops, huge fields.

Why? All attempts to explain this from different cultural backgrounds only served to increase the puzzle.

12:15

Magical Girl

BF

BF

•geel•

Carlos Vermut, Spain, 2014, DCP, 127 min, Spanish, e.s.

•geel•

Bui Kim Quy, Vietnam, 2014, DCP, 87 min, Vietnamese, e.s.

The big winner at the San Sebastian Festival, a contemporary, stylised and occasionally Surrealist film noir. A father wants to grant the last, expensive wish of his terminally sick daughter, but when he decides to achieve this by blackmailing a beautiful strange woman, the question is whether the end justifies the means. Nominated for The Big Screen Award

Unusual people live on inaccessible mountains in Vietnam. They are regularly the subject of documentaries and visited by tourists. This time, they act in a very imaginative, Surrealistic film. An old father demands that his handicapped son produce an heir. His nubile Daughter waits in vain for her turn.

22:00

14:45

BF

Second Coming

•geel•

Marcin Dudziak, Poland / France, 2014, DCP, 75 min, Polish, e.s.

Father and son on a journey in the forest. Their trip through nature is an act of initiation for them both. What looks innocent and safe turns out to be dangerous and vicious. A beautifully shot meditation on first encounters with the world as it is.

Cinerama 4

BF

•geel•

Debbie Tucker Green, United Kingdom, 2014, DCP, 105 min, English, e.s.

Gripping debut about a typical middle-class Jamaican family in South London. Jackie has fallen pregnant in a miraculous way, but avoids any direct conversations about it. A social-realist drama largely set in the home. Stylish and subtle, with an excellent cast. Nominated for The Big Screen Award.

22:00

The Lesson

09:00

The Strange Eyes of Dr. Myes [wp]

BF

Kris Kristinsson, Netherlands, 2015, DCP, 72 min, various languages, e.s.

Breath-taking avant-garde experiments and films referring to visionary technologies are interwoven in this media archaeological essay that holds up a mirror to our contemporary media frenzy.

Social utopias from 1880 onward supply the thrust of this cinematic time trip.

Tilda Swinton supplies the voice-over.

Nancy Andrews, USA, 2015, DCP, 76 min, English

WF

Dr. Myes is about to make a scientific breakthrough: adding animals’ senses to humans. Her research is not going smoothly, however, and her good intentions quickly turn against her. A unique mix of 1930s Hollywood and 1960s B-movies, with dashes of horror, animation and musical.

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM

Hearts Know * the Runaway Brides [wp]

RG

Martin Reinhart / Thomas Tode / Manu Luksch, Austria, 2015, DCP, 85 min, English, e.s.

Calling [ip]

13:45

12:30

16:00

•blauw•

Misawa Takuya, Japan / Thailand, 2014, DCP, 88 min, Japanese, e.s.

•oranje01•

•blauw•

Impressive, labyrinthine narrative by Gieling (Johan Cruijff: en un momento dado) on Bach’s St Matthew Passion and the exceptional relationship that experts (including theatre director Peter Sellars and conductor Pieter Jan Leusink) and enthusiasts have with this work. In the meantime, a homeless choir rehearses the piece.

EP

Adam Curtis, United Kingdom, 2015, DCP, 135 min, English

Chigasaki Story [ep]

The craziness of our times, depicted through old television shows. Haruko is a girl who prefers to cuddle up to her old-fashioned TV set. In this wondrous story, a television can transform into a man: and this is by no means the end of the strange cheerfulness. A masterpiece of the imagination.

Ramón Gieling, Netherlands, 2015, DCP, 98 min, Dutch / English

Mobilisierung der Träume [wp]

11:45

Lisa Takeba, Japan, 2015, Video, 76 min, Japanese, e.s.

14:00

Vernon Chatman, USA, 2009, Video, 72 min, English

•geel•

10:00

Haruko’s Paranormal Laboratory [wp]

A joy for the eyes and ears, this highpoint of the Brazilian trilogy Operation Sonia Silk. A dreamy making-of about the two other episodes and also a cinematographic essay (in picture, text, sound and music) about cinema and filmmaking and, above all, about love.

Final Flesh [ep]

Bitter Lake [wp]

BF

Pathé 5

Bruno Safadi / Ricardo Pretti, Brazil, 2014, DCP, 73 min, Portuguese, e.s.

Erbarme dich - Matthäus Passion Stories [wp]

Cosmodrama [wp]

16:15

09:15

Maybe the 1960s, maybe the future.

Seven astronauts wake up in a spaceship, not knowing where they have come from nor where they are heading. As the ship operates by itself, they have ample time to meditate, rather scientifically, on matter, life and the universe.

11:45

BF Calling Marcin Dudziak 22:00 – 23:15 BF The Lesson Kristina Grozeva / Petar Valchanov 22:00 – 23:47

Philippe Fernandez, France, 2015, DCP, 105 min, French, e.s.

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Juan Daniel F. Molero, Peru, 2015, DCP, 103 min, Spanish, e.s.

The Bull [wp]

La mujer de los perros [wp] TG

BF The Inseminator Bui Kim Quy 18:00 – 19:27

BF Second Coming Debbie Tucker Green 14:45 – 16:30

10:00

Co-director Llinás plays an intriguing, unique character in this existentialist fable about a woman who lives with a pack of dogs on the very edge of the populated world, with minimal contact with other people. The seasons come and go. On life and survival, love and death.

12:00

Jeppe Rønde, Denmark, 2015, DCP, 99 min, English

BF Set Me Free Kim Tae-Yong 13:45 – 15:33

Willem Burger Zaal

Combined programme, 73 min

Bridgend [wp]

Ana Lungu 12:30 – 13:51

de Doelen Pathé 3 ZATERDAG 24-01-2015

DINAMO P&I Screenings: 2

16:45

of a Dutiful Daughter

BF Chigasaki Story Misawa Takuya 11:45 – 13:13

de Doelen Jurriaanse Zaal 10:00

WF Self-portrait

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BF

•geel•

Kristina Grozeva / Petar Valchanov, Bosnia and Herzegovina / Bulgaria / Greece, 2014, DCP, 107 min, Bulgarian, e.s.

A young woman desperately needs money to save herself from social and moral collapse. This simple situation becomes a highly emotional tragedy and moral parable. A thrilling debut full of suspense about everyday survival. Based on a true - and quite unbelievable - story.

Nominated for The Big Screen Award.

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M A N O E L D E O L I V E I R A : C H A FA R I Z DA S V I R T U D E S , V I E N N A L E T R A I L E R 2 0 14

V15_Ins_daily tiger_V15 22.01.15 18:47 Seite 1

OCTOBER 22窶年OVEMBER 5, 2015

WWW.VIENNALE.AT

Timbuktu

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Belgian film festival cancelled over terror threat

By Geoffrey Macnab

A film festival in Belgium which Palme D’Or winners the Dardenne brothers were due to attend has been cancelled following a terrorist threat and the evacuation of a cinema. Le Festival Ramdan was due to run from Jan 20-27 at the Imagix Cinema in Tournai, a city in the French-speaking part of Belgium. But the week-long festival was abandoned yesterday after authorities in Tournai stated there were “serious” indications of a risk of an attack on the cinema.

The Imagix Cinema will remain closed until at least Jan 28. The move follows the attack on the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris earlier this month, where 12 people were killed by two radicalised brothers offended by its cartoon depictions of the Islamic prophet Mohammed.

It also follows the shooting of two suspected jihadists by police in an anti-terror operation in eastern Belgium. A third person was also arrested in the raid in Verviers, where weapons were reported to have been recovered.

In Tournai, local press has speculated that the planned Ramdan screenings of documentary The Essence of Terror and Oscar-nominated feature Timbuktu may have sparked the terrorist threat.

Timbuktu, directed by Abderrahmane Sissako, centres on the brief occupation of the West African city by militant Islamic rebels.

The film, which is nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film at this year’s Oscars and won two awards at the Cannes Film Festival, was recently banned by the mayor of Paris suburb Villiers-sur-Marne – a decision that has since been reversed following a public outcry in support of the film. Timbuktu is currently playing to sold-out theatres at IFFR. The 5th edition of Le Festival Ramdan was also due to host a screening of Two Days, One Night, attended by directors the Dardenne brothers, which has been cancelled as a result of the closure.

Speaking to ScreenDaily, Thierry Laermans of Belgium cinema

federation FCB gave an eyewitness account of what happened. “I was in Tournai yesterday and was evacuated from the cinema,” Laermans said.

The cinema closed down at around 5.15pm and the audience was asked to leave. “There was no panic. It was very calm,” Laermans said. ”It was just a precautionary measure. Nothing happened. As a consequence of what happened in Paris and in Verviers last Tuesday, I think it was the Federal Police, the terror agency, that asked the cinema to close down because they had indications that something like that would have happened to them. Let’s hope it’s a one shot thing and it won’t prohibit visitors to come to cinemas.”

Imagix director Peter Carpentier could not be reached for comment and details of the threat have not been confirmed. However, the festival has issued a statement on its website, stating that it celebrates “tolerance, liberty and exchange” and claiming that “the soul of the festival” will be reinforced by this event.

New role for Hannewijk

Dutch production rises

By Geoffrey Macnab

Speaking in Rotterdam, Netherlands Film Fund director Doreen Boonekamp has given a very upbeat assessment of the state of the Dutch film industry. She has also revealed details of how the country’s new cash rebate system, introduced last year, is driving up production levels.

Leo Hannewijk, festival director at Film by the Sea in Vlissingen, has taken up a new, additional role as Film Commissioner in the Dutch province of Zeeland. His appointment comes as film activity in the region is intensifying, partly in response to the new Dutch cash rebate incentive introduced last year. Recent films to have shot in Zeeland include Berlinale title Confetti Harvest, the first feature by Tallulah H. Schwab, and Fucking Perfect, a feature doc about master chef Sergio Herman who closes his 3 Michelin star restaurant in the region. Also shooting in the region was Roel Reiné’s epic seafaring costume drama Michiel De Ruyter, starring Charles Dance, Frank Lammers and Rutger Hauer.

(A Film will be giving Michiel De Ruyter a 150-copy release in the

Confetti Harvest

Netherlands later this month.)

Hannewijk and his colleagues in Zeeland will be meeting with Reiné next week to have talks about making a film looking at the Battle of the Schedt in the region and in nearby Antwerp during the latter part of World War II. As he takes up his duties as film commissioner, Hannewijk is continuing his work at Film by the Sea, which will be holding its 17th edition in September (11-20).

Author Adrian van Dis will be chairing the jury.

Film by the Sea distinguishes

itself from other Dutch and European festivals by emphasising the links between film and literature. Its main competition showcases literary adaptations.

Hannewijk already has ideas in place for a sidebar at the next edition which will look at the representation of AI and robots in films. Hannewijk will be inviting brilliant young American neuroscientist Steve Ramirez who has been doing ground-breaking research on locating brain cells in mice that hold specific memories, then triggering and manipulating those cells. (In effect, he has been wiping and replacing memory faculties.) “It is a nice theme to work on,” Hannewijk says.

“Ramirez knows a lot about film and is inspired by film. I hope he will come to make a huge lecture.”

Savage presents new projects Oscar-nominated Flemish director Michaël R. Roskam’s Belgian-set feature The Faithful may shoot as soon as this summer.

Geoffrey Macnab reports

The film, set in Brussels against the backcloth of the gang war in the city in the early 1990s, is expected to star Matthias Schoenaerts, who worked with Roskam on his debut feature. Production had originally been expected to begin in 2016 but the film’s producer, Bart Van Langendonck of Savage Films, says the film could move into production much sooner.

“We’re looking at summer of 2015 to shoot,” Van Langendonck says of the film, which Savage is

making with Stone Angels in France. Sales agents are clamouring around the project, which is likely to be packaged up and announced formally in Cannes.

The Savage Film boss was speaking during this year’s IFFR. He will be at the festival this weekend to present Nathalie Teirlinck’s new feature project Tonic Immobility (working title) at co-production event, CineMart. The film is about a young woman working as an escort who dodges deeper social contact. When she’s forced to take care of her son after the death of her ex, her apparent indifference fades away and she is confronted with the emotional emptiness in her life. Savage Film is aiming to set up the film as a Belgian/Canadian co-production.

Geoffrey Macnab reports

78 million Euros was spent on Dutch production last year, a considerable hike on production investment in 2013 (which was around 20 million Euros less).

Boonekamp said that, as a result of the new incentive, “a lot of post-production work is going back to the Netherlands. The incentive offers a cash rebate of 30% on the eligible Dutch spend.”

Van Langendonck is also hatching a new feature with cult Belgian filmmaker and musician Tom Barman, founder of rock band dEUS. The Alcoholics will be Barman’s first feature as director since Any Way the Wind Blows in 2003. A first draft of the screenplay will be ready by early June. This is a story about a Miami nightclub janitor turned drug smuggler who ends up in somebody else’s place in ‘The Hab’, a retro-futuristic rehab centre for alcoholics on the Basque coast. Savage Films is planning to set up The Alcoholics, which already has support from the Flanders Audiovisual Fund, as a Belgian/Irish/ Spanish coproduction. It will be English-speaking and the aim is to go for an A-list cast.

Van Langendonck has known Barman since the early 1990s. The film producer is a former concert promoter who used to book gigs for Barman’s band. Savage is close to finishing production on dancer-turned-di-

Stray Bear ramps up

By Geoffrey Macnab

Stray Bear Productions, the Londonbased company set up by BFI Vision Award winner Ivana MacKinnon and run by MacKinnon and producer Lauren Dark, is ramping up its development slate. The company, which produced IFFR opening title War Book, has several new projects edging closer toward production.

Stray Bear aims to focus primarily on “female talent and female-driven stories.”

One long-gestating film close to being packaged is long-gestating comedy drama Olivia and Jim from writers Henrietta and Jessica Ashworth. Stray Bear is partnering on the project with Diarmuid McKeown of Equation Pictures. The budget is likely to be around $5 million.

The project has BFI support. Olivia and Jim is described by MacKinnon as “a warm-hearted” story about “a woman in

Since the incentive was launched in June 2014, 51 film projects have received a total of €13.6 million from the scheme. These have included such high-profile projects as Mike van Diem’s De Surprise, Alex van Warmerdam’s Schneider vs. Bax, Polish feature Math Sucks, Austrian movie The Night of A Thousand Hours and Roel Reiné’s epic seafaring yarn Michiel de Ruyter, about the ‘Golden Age’ Dutch admiral who routed the English fleet.

(The film, starring Rutger Hauer, Charles Dance and Frank Lammers, premieres next week.)

There will be slightly over 25 million Euros available through the incentive during 2015.In response to the increased investment and production activity, a number of new local film commissions have sprung up in different

her late 30s mourning the death of her husband. He was a well-known writer.

After he dies, she finds a book he has been writing. In the book is an account of all the women he has been having an affair with […] in a moment of madness, she takes a road trip across the UK to confront these secret mistresses. Along with the ride for her is this estranged stepson who hates her.”

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM

regions of the Netherlands.

Dutch films had an approximately 20% share of box office and admissions in 2014. The results were bolstered by the spectacular performance of comedy sequel Gooische Vrouwen 2, a Desperate Housewives-style comedy which made US$12 million in 2014.

Overall admissions reached 30,757,595 ( down 0.2% on 2013) and box office generated €249,882,391 (up 0.1%).

“You need to get a stronger position in the home market.

On the other hand, we are also really working on achieving a stronger international position by becoming much more involved in international co-productions and enabling Dutch films to be premiered and selected at major international festivals.”

rector Wim Vandekeybus’ Galloping Mind. The film will be released by Kinepolis in Belgium in the summer. A sales agent should be announced once a rough cut is available in the spring.

Also pushing ahead is Bad Drawings, a new BFI-backed indie comedy scripted by writer Peter Snelling, best known for his blog Bad Drawings of My Daily Life.

Meanwhile, Stray Bear is in advanced development with writer Brian Martin on The Enemy Within: a drama set during the 1980s miners’ strike. The project has Creative England support. “It is the story of what it would it would be like to discover you were gay in a Yorkshire mining community when the strike broke out in 1984,” MacKinnon said. “Pride was a beautifully warm-hearted, optimistic

Tonic Immobility

view of that time. This is a slightly more hard-hitting, nuanced view of what it would be really be like to be a young gay man in a mining community in Yorkshire. It might not have been that easy.”

As already announced, the company is on board Michael Pearce’s Jersey-set thriller/romance Beast, which Stray Bear is making with Agile Films with BFI support. The company also has projects with Rowan Athale and Sam Firth. Stray Bear aims to make “movies that are genuinely entertaining but also slightly offbeat.”

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