Daily Tiger #7 (English version) by International Film Festival Rotterdam

daily tiger

42nd International Film Festival Rotterdam #7 Wednesday 30 January 2013 ZOZ voor Nederlandse editie

(news P3)

(Karaoke GIRL / Silent Ones / THEY’LL COME BACK P5)

(Tokyo Giants / Island of St. Matthews P7)

Nakata Hideo

photo: Ruud Jonkers

Hideous histories In a roundabout way, the credit for IFFR presenting the world premiere of Nakata Hideo’s The Complex must go to the English weather. By Ben Walters

“Exactly 20 years ago, I flew to Rotterdam from London”, Nakata explains. “I was studying for a year on a scholarship but I just wanted to get out – the weather is so terrible.” IFFR regulars might not be in the habit of celebrating the fest for its meteorological charms – but Nakata was in search of cinematic refreshment too. “I bought a guest pass and watched so many interesting movies. Rotterdam was already famous among Japanese filmmakers, especially young ones, for finding new talent.” Technofear

It was only five years after that visit that Nakata made his name worldwide with Ringu, the profoundly uncanny story about a haunted videotape that defined the genre of J-horror: anxieties over communications technology and troubled social and familial bonds mingled with the irruption of twisted horror into the everyday world. Nakata made Ringu 2 (1999), saw the original remade by Hollywood, then directed The Ring Two (2005) – a new entry rather than a remake of the Japanese sequel – himself. In the meantime, he’d made Dark Water (2002), another key J-horror title in which adult guilt, a child’s need for love and abysmal terror are horrifyingly comingled.

Out of the box

Hollowness

Since then, Nakata has made other tales of crime and the supernatural, but The Complex is being seen as a return to the J-horror template with which he remains most closely associated. “I tried to get out of the small box called the horror genre, but I struggled”, he admits. “But as long as the story is interesting, I don’t care what genre I’m making.” And the story is interesting, all right. The Complex centres on student nurse Asuka (Maede Atsuko), whom we meet moving with her parents and kid brother into a flat in a quiet, rundown suburban apartment complex where the only visible neighbour is another young boy. Soon, Asuka’s family are acting strangely and there are bumps in the night from next door... The film won’t disappoint J-horror fans, or more general audiences, with its tricksy plotting, elision of reality, fantasy and supernatural elements, frequent frights and building sense of dread. Also present are the familiar themes of guilt and alienation within the family, the generation of great suspense from apparently mundane urban architecture and monstrous visual coups to trouble our dreams. Nakata takes particular pleasure in unnerving audiences with scenes that might seem absurd in the abstract. “People laughed when they read the script of Ringu”, he recalls. “‘A ghost coming out of the TV? Ha!’ Then I was determined that moment should feel the most chilling or frightening. That’s the most challenging part.”

The Complex’s production was sparked by the interest of its star, who is transitioning from a pop career to film acting. In crafting the original story (Ringu and Dark Water were adapted from novels), Nakata took inspiration from samurai-era ghost stories about perilous romances between the living and the dead and a more recent source: Let the Right One In, Tomas Alfredson’s 2008 vampire film set around a similar apartment block. Like his own earlier films, Nakata suggests, the Swedish horror engaged with “the kind of loneliness or helpless feeling of a kid who wants to be loved or to be friends with someone – that kind of isolated feeling, that slight hollowness that a supernatural thing can take advantage of.” Strong mothers

Nakata’s affinity for such feelings might not be arbitrary. The filmmaker mentions an interview he gave to promote Dark Water, during which the journalist observed that Nakata favoured strong single mothers as protagonists. “I was astonished at that being pointed out because my parents lived separately and my mother had been such a strong mother. I had not been aware of it but I could not deny the similarity with my childhood.” The Complex, receiving its world premiere at Rotterdam, represents a kind of happy return to the past. During Nakata’s visit from London in 1993, he recalls, “I thought, maybe next time I come back here, I should bring my own film.” Two decades on, he has.

INTERNATIONAL film festival rotterdam

Industry event today 2 p.m. – 3.30 p.m. Expert debate: Raiders of the Lost Archive, on creating new works from old materials and archives. Moderated by Madeleine Molyneaux Industry Club, de Doelen, 4th floor. Limited access.

Today in the Tea House Amirali Ghasemi is a walking archive of Iranian art, experimental and underground cinema. He has a fine collection of work showing in the Invisible Present Tense programme, but has even more special things on his hard drive. This afternoon in the Tea House he will present some of these that played in his recent Limited Access festival in Tehran. In addition to Amirali’s presentation, young animation filmmaker Mahsa Shoja Araghi (Magnificent Life of the Prince) will also be there to show some short films by her friends. Tea House/Gallery Inside Iran, Schouwburgplein 54, 4 p.m. – 6 p.m.

4 - 7 april 2013 the cinemas willemstad curacaoiffr.com

When the Daily Tiger swung by the CineMart Power Lunch yesterday – a meeting of US and European producers on the topic of European and US coproduction – French director Eva Husson (left), whose Bang Gang is in CineMart, was describing to her fellow diners the “very painful experience” of working with private-equity investors on her first feature project. The anecdote prompted a lively discussion among the other guests, including US director Antonio Campas

(right) and Spanish producer Juan Gordon, about the difference between European production – which tends to be based around coproduction treaties – and US, in which private financiers play a more prominent role. Now in its second year, the Power Lunches are an opportunity for key industry professionals to discuss pressing issues in an informal setting; the meetings feed into CineMart organisers’ planning about future editions. photo: Bram Belloni

Casualty of war Willie Doherty’s CineMart project Amnesia explores Northern Ireland’s troubled recent past. By Geoffrey MacNab

Thirteen people were shot dead by British soldiers on ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Derry in 1972. As the mayhem and carnage unfolded, a boy called Willie Doherty was watching from the window of his family home in the Bogside. “My parents’ house was in the middle of that part of the Bogside”, Doherty remembers. “At the time, I knew what I had seen. It followed the usual pattern of the daily riots when the crowd would go forward and then pull back. This day … there was a different urgency. The paratroopers entered the area behind Rossville Flats. I saw armoured vehicles drive through a fence with people still climbing on it trying to get out of the way, then screech to a halt and guys jump out of the vehicles and start shooting at the crowd.” Doherty is here in Rotterdam, pitching his feature film project Amnesia at CineMart as part of the new Art:Film initiative. This project, like many of his previous

films, is inspired by the contested landscape of Northern Ireland. He is fascinated by the way “language itself becomes one of the casualties in the process of how the story of the north of Ireland is told.” Amnesia, budgeted at €300,000, is due to shoot later in the year. Doherty hopes it can be shown to mark Derry’s stint as 2013 UK City of Culture. “There is something of my experience of Derry in the 70s and 80s that is at the root of this, but I am also interested in what is happening in the present. You’ve probably seen recently that Northern Ireland has been back in the news for all the wrong reasons”, he says, referring to recent rioting in Belfast. In spite of the Peace Process that has been ongoing since 1998, Doherty believes politicians haven’t yet dealt with the underlying causes of the conflict. In the film, he uses amnesia as a metaphor for the culture of denial that still exists within Northern Irish politics. “A lot of the work I make is directly and indirectly about the landscape. I am interested in the way the landscape functions as a repository for the stuff that doesn’t get solved”, Doherty – twice nominated for the Turner Prize

– reflects. Amnesia is aimed at a cinema audience. He is hoping ace cinematographer Seamus McGarvey will shoot the film, having collaborated with him on various earlier projects. Doherty is at IFFR in a dual capacity. His short film Secretion, also produced by Raw Nerve Productions, screens in the Tiger Shorts competition. As Doherty notes, there have been many films about ‘The Troubles.’ “I saw Shadow Dancer, that … has many frustrating elements”, Doherty reflects. He is equivocal, too, about Hunger (2008), made by fellow artist-turned-director Steve McQueen about hunger striker Bobby Sands. “I enjoyed three-quarters of it. The first half was fantastic. The long sequence with the conversation with the priest is exceptional. Unfortunately, after that, they lose the run of it. Conflating the figure of Bobby Sands the hunger striker with religious iconography seemed to me … to collapse into a kind of sentimentality.” Unlike most other filmmakers who’ve tackled the Troubles, Doherty knows the subject matter at first-hand. “I am trying to come at it from the view point of an insider, somebody who lives there and has spent time there.”

Now we are five Cinéart Netherlands has reached the ripe old age of five this year. By Geoffrey Macnab

Celebrating its birthday, the young Dutch offshoot of Belgian powerhouse Cinéart is in Rotterdam in force this year. The company helped sponsor this week’s opening CineMart bash and has also picked up several titles in the IFFR programme. When Cinéart opened a Dutch office in 2008, industry veteran Wallie Pollé was recruited to head the operation. “The heart is in the film, not in the money”, Pollé expresses the philosophy underpinning the venture. Before 2008, Cinéart worked closely with A-Film in the Netherlands. However, by setting up its own operation, the company has given itself extra reach and flexibility. Pollé’s strategy is to identify talent and then to support it from the earliest stage. Cinéart NL is now the natural home for the country’s most innovative directors, young and old. The company has already pre-bought &Me, the new feature from Norbert ter Hall. It is already on board Number Nine (working title), the latest project from Alex van Warmerdam, which is being pitched at CineMart. Meanwhile, Cinéart NL has already pre-bought Zurich, the latest feature from newcomer Sacha Polak (whose debut feature Hemel won a FIPRESCI Prize at Berlin last year). Another pick-up is Nanouk Leopold’s new feature It is All So Quiet (opening the Berlinale’s Panorama Special next week). It’s thanks to Pollé that cinema audiences are being giv-

Wallie Pollé

photo: Nadine Maas

en the chance to see Diederik Ebbinge’s debut feature Matterhorn, originally shot for TV but now screening as a world premiere in IFFR’s Bright Future section. “I recognized something really talented and I wanted to bring it to the screen”, Pollé states of the film (which has now been picked up for world sales by Media Luna). Cinéart NL releases between 20 and 22 films in the Netherlands. Many of these are also released in Belgium but around half a dozen are seen only by Dutch audiences. Pollé believes in an “auteur-driven” policy mirroring that

of his colleagues at Cinéart in Belgium, who always work with directors like Ken Loach and the Dardenne brothers. “That’s how we love to work. We believe in those people.” The Cinéart NL boss has been coming to the festival since the very earliest days. “I attended the first ones with Hubert Bals. A lot has changed, that’s for sure. But I still think the festival is unique, not only for the filmmakers, but for the audience. I still love it to walk around and see the audience flocking in for incredibly small but beautiful jewels!”

Balancing act Binger chief Gamila Ylstra is in Rotterdam not only to oversee the Lab’s IFFR activities but also to build on relationships with Dutch and international institutions alike, as she tries to firm up the Binger’s financial future. By Nick Cunningham

After the Dutch government’s Summer 2012 decision to end Binger subsidies (as of January 1, 2013) Ylstra negotiated for more time to devise a plan to secure the future of the organisation. “We are now building on new relationships with EYE and the distributors’ association (through the development of a trailer service) and we are also trying to find collaborations with the Film Fund, but of course the Film Fund is reorganising itself. Everybody in the Netherlands is trying to find a balance.” One key advantage the Binger has, she argues, is the ongoing relationships with myriad international institutions with which it has collaborated in the past. “I’m talking to (international) organisations, asking them to support their filmmakers in coming to the Binger, and quite a few are really keen to do so. They want to look into that on a more structural basis … In the past, the Dutch government basically supported foreign filmmakers, but by teaming up this way they will be supporting their own filmmakers. It makes sense.” While the core Writers’ and Creative Producers’ Lab will remain intact, the Directors’ Lab will now focus on fewer directing talents. “A core of three will be there for the whole period of the artist-in-residency programmes, they will be given a menu of workshops and a personal trainer to work on their projects and to make a menu that will fit their projects. Each project and each individual needs a different kind of support. It’s the same set-up and the same ideas we have built on, but we are organising it differently.” “I believe there are two main focusses for the Binger “, Ylstra continues. “On the one hand, storytelling, script development and the creative process; on the other, the need to keep in touch with new developments, to build new partners and to keep people informed of these new developments.” As an example, Ylstra cites the CineCrowd initiative launched during CineMart. “We have basic finance for 2013 – we will need a couple more partners to actuality get it solid for 2013, but we will use this year to build all these relationships and make them really stable, for example with partner film institutes but also sponsorships. So in that sense we are cool, and one of the milestones this summer will be to check if we are meeting the financial targets we have set for 2013, and to see how we will finance 2014; it’s a kind of rolling system. The suspense continues”, she stresses.

Brand new slate The Daily Tiger caught up yesterday with Reinier Selen of Rinkel Film and TV Productions, whose busy production slate for 2013 kicks off with the CineMart 2010 project Brand New-U (Simon Pummell), which will start shooting in the UK, Ireland and the Netherlands in March 2013. UK production house Hot Property Films owns the majority stake, while Rinkel and Irish Savage Production take minority co-pro credits. Shooting on Paula van der Oest’s Lucia de B (majority-produced by Rinkel) will commence June 2013. The film details the controversial case of a nurse from The Hague who was wrongly convicted of multiple murder. Her trial is considered one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in Dutch history. “Paula was involved from the first treatment. I had been looking for a project for years to work on with her … and I consider this project totally fit for her. The challenge for all of us in this film is … to make it a universal, more cinematic story.” Selen and Van der Oest are also developing a feature length doc entitled Rafaël, about a couple for whom the Arab Spring coincides with the birth of their first child, with dramatic consequences. In addition, principal photography on Rinkel’s Secrets of War will commence July 2013. Set during WWII, the friendship between two boys is put under great strain when a new girl joins their class, especially when it becomes apparent that she is Jewish and that the father of one of the boys is a keen fascist. The film is co-produced by Tarantula (Lux) and Belgian Living Stone. NC

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Lost highway Marcelo Lordello’s Tiger entrant is a subtly political coming-of-age tale. By Edward Lawrenson

A teenage girl and her older brother are ejected from a car on the side of a busy road in a remote rural setting by their parents, fed up with their squabbling. The car drives off. The siblings continue to argue, and the brother storms off, leaving the young girl alone. Cars whizz past. Night draws closer. And despite their assurances, her parents don’t return. This is the striking opening sequence of Brazilian director Marcelo Lordello’s They’ll Come Back, which received its world premiere in the Hivos Tiger Awards Competition strand last night.

Crossing borders Ricky Rijneke’s debut feature is a dreamlike portrait of a distressed young woman. By Geoffrey Macnab

This impressive prologue was based on the screenplay of a short film Lordello wrote. He got funding for the project back in 2009, but felt he needed to tell more of the story as a feature. So, with the help of producer Mannuela Costa, he used the short’s budget of $25,000 to fund a shoot that followed his teenage protagonist after she was abandoned by the side of the road (post-production funding came later). Cris (a quietly impressive performance by Maria Luiza Tavares, who was the daughter of a friend of Lordello’s wife) is sheltered by a local community squatting on unused farmland owned by big commercial interests, before returning to her home in Recife, where she discovers a big change to her family situation.

A young Eastern European woman, Csilla (Orsi Tóth), and her brother Isti are on the road together without a clear destination, looking for a better life. Csilla wakes up inside a crashed car, in the middle of nowhere, not knowing where her brother Isti is. He has vanished. This is the starting point for Rotterdam-based filmmaker Ricky Rijneke’s debut feature Silent Ones, screening in the Hivos Tiger Awards Competition. “The shooting you can divide in two”, the young Dutch director points out. Scenes set on land are filmed in a more “dynamic” way with a handheld camera. The scenes on board the ship on which Csilla embarks as she seeks a new life in Western Europe are filmed in more “sober” and “claustrophobic” fashion. Throughout, dialogue is kept to a minimum. Silent Ones stars Hungarian actress Orsi Tóth. She met Rijneke when they were both attending the Locarno Festival. “It was a challenge!” Tóth reflects on Silent

Ones. “To be in the Netherlands was heavy for me because I was so alone. That was not easy.” She and her director spoke different languages. They communicated in an intuitive way. When Rijneke started writing the screenplay, she had no idea that her main protagonist would be a Hungarian. “I start the film with images, atmosphere and the state of mind of the character”, she says. When she met Tóth in Locarno, she had already seen her in Kornél Mundruczó’s Pleasant Days. “I really liked that film. I knew she was a really great actress, very strong ... I work with people who inspire me – it doesn’t matter where they come from.” She describes Tóth as “a one-take actress” who was always able to pick up the sense of a scene without too much instruction. Silent Ones has a dreamlike quality. The director has described the film as portraying the inside of her lead character’s mind. “Yes, the film is about the mental state of the young Hungarian woman. After she wakes up in the middle of nowhere and her little brother has disappeared in the car accident, there is a grieving process. She withdraws into a dream world. The boundaries between reality and fantasy begin to blur and fade

away.” Rijneke wanted her film to have the quality of “a feverish dream.” This wasn’t a movie shot in a rigid way and then cut together according to the screenplay. Rijneke acknowledges that she “discovered” her movie during the editing process, which took many, many months. “The script always changes. Even in editing, everything changes and the script changes. It’s like an organic process. In the editing, you are exploring the film again.” Silent Ones passed through Rotterdam’s CineMart as the budget was pulled together. “That was really a good platform to meet a lot of producers and to network”, she recalls. The young director is already writing a new project, Hotel Europa, about “young isolated people who, after a long winter, want to go out and party.” Even before the Rotterdam premiere, Silent Ones was picked up for world sales by French company Wide Management – a sign that international distributors already see Rijneke as a talent to follow.

Hivos Tiger Awards Competition Silent Ones – Ricky Rijneke Wed 30 Jan 22:15 PA3 Sat 02 Feb 18:45 PA5

Transformative experience Tiger contender Karaoke Girl is the product of a transformative experience undergone by director Visra Vichit Vadakan, and in turn transformed the life of its lead actress. By Ben Walters

Karaoke Girl – Visra Vichit Vadakan Wed 30 Jan 18:30 PA4 Fri 01 Feb 19:15 PA3 Sat 02 Feb 17:15 CI2

They’ll Come Back – Marcelo Lordello Wed 30 Jan 12:30 PA7 Thu 31 Jan 13:15 PA1 Sat 02 Feb 12:45 PA5

Hivos Tiger Awards Competition

mentary footage of her life in Bangkok and stayed with her at her parents’ for a couple of weeks. “It gave me the opportunity to get to know her and her family,” Vichit Vadakan says. “We shot interviews, which we use as voiceover in the film, and I had her keep a journal and a dream journal. Then I started writing the script loosely based on her experiences.” The results are beautiful, engaging and moving; the documentary and fictional elements weave together harmoniously to create an intimate and sympathetic atmosphere. The details of sex work are left off screen; instead, we get to know Sa’s personality, aspirations and family, courtesy of the director’s keenly elegant observational eye and experienced DoP Sandi Sissel. Towards the end, the film even takes a turn for the expressively imaginative – a flight of wish-fulfilment that still feels in keeping with the spirit of the enterprise. It’s no surprise to hear the two women have become close: “we’re like sisters now”, Vichit Vadakan says. The director intends to continue combining fiction and documentary; for her star, however, Karaoke Girl proved to be a role-playing project as transformative as Vichit Vadakan’s student experience. “It was inspirational for me”, Sittijun says of the experience. “I felt for the character in the film; I could see all the things she’d gone through and all the obstacles she faced. There were some scenes that made me cry, but in the end she was able to move on and when I saw that it encouraged me to make a new beginning.” She stopped working as an escort and started studying. Would she be interested in pursuing acting and singing? “If I have the opportunity, I’d love to!”

Lordello is excited about presenting the film at IFFR. “We are aware of the festival through our friends who showed here, other Brazilian filmmakers. Everybody talks about Rotterdam because it’s a festival that has an interest in the kind of work we make.”

The result is an absorbing, closely observed study of the young woman’s emotional development. Through her encounter with the squatters’ group and the family of a cleaner who gives her a roof for a few nights, she also develops a growing political awareness. “I don’t like to spell things out or lecture the audience”, says Lordello of the middle-class Cris’s exposure to less privileged groups, but he’s pleased when non-Brazilian spectators pick up on his film’s political concerns. They’ll Come Back won a number of awards following its premiere at last year’s Brasilia Film Festival: “It’s a very traditional festival,” says Lordello, “with a history of discovering good, political cinema; a lot of filmmakers I love show films there, so we were happy to screen there”.

When she was studying biology at Stanford, Visra Vichit Vadakan took part in an on-camera role-playing project in which she and fellow students shared their feelings about a fictional peer who had supposedly died a year earlier. “I was completely blown away”, Vichit Vadakan says. “The professor created an experience that felt so real, despite being fabricated.” The experience proved transformative. Vichit Vadakan went on to study filmmaking at NYU and make short films in which documentary and fiction merge, with “non-actors playing roles they can personally relate to”. (Two of them have played at IFFR; Vichit Vadakan has also attended CineMart and secured Hubert Bals

Funding for her work.) Now she’s made a feature on similar principles: Hivos Tiger Awards Competition contender Karaoke Girl, starring Sa Sittijun as a young Bangkok escort working in a karaoke bar to support her family and hoping to find happiness with a charming young suitor. “I grew up in Bangkok and there’s a very healthy sex industry there”, says Vichit Vadakan, who was born in the US. “I had been curious about the women who work at night for a long time, so I used the idea [of making a hybrid documentary-fiction feature] as an opportunity to explore this. I met Sa through a friend. She was 22 and had been working for four years. Despite her hard past, she had a sense of optimism I really admired and was drawn to.” Sittijun had moved from north-east Thailand to Bangkok aged 15 to work in a factory, to help with her family’s debts. After three years, she moved into more lucrative escort work. Vichit Vadakan filmed docu-

INTERNATIONAL film festival rotterdam

Colofon Daily Tiger NL: Anton Damen (hoofdredactie), Kim van der Meulen (eindredactie), Joost Broeren, Paul van de Graaf, Sietse Meijer, Maricke Nieuwdorp, Nicole Santé, Veerle Snijders (redactie), Loes Evers, Rik Mertens, Pete Wu (web), Sanne de Rooij (marketing en communicatie), Marieke Berkhout (traffic) UK: Edward Lawrenson (editor-in-chief ), Nick Cunningham, Geoffrey MacNab, Mark Baker (editors), Ben Walters (web) Met medewerking van: Mieke van der Linden, Harriëtte Ubels Programmainformatie: Chris Schouten, Melissa van der Schoor Coördinatie A-Z: Saskia Gravelijn (tekst), Amanda Harput (beeld) Fotografie: Felix Kalkman, Bram Belloni, Corinne de Korver, Marije van Woerden, Ruud Jonkers, Nichon Glerum, Nadine Maas Vormgeving: Sjoukje van Gool, Laurenz van Galen, Gerald Zevenboom Drukker: Veenman+ Acquisitie: Daily Productions Oplage: 10.000 per dag, Volkskrantdag 12.000

Lost in translation

After the flood Family memories of a 1973 flood inspired Kevin Jerome Emerson’s new film The Island of St. Matthews. By Edward Lawrenson

Nicolas Provost

Discussing his latest short, Nicolas Provost explains why he’s taken a year’s break from the film industry. By Edward Lawrenson

Receiving its world premiere in the Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films, Nicolas Provost’s Tokyo Giants is a richly enigmatic, darkly playful mood piece, assembled from footage the director shot in the Japanese city. Filming unsuspecting passers-by walking the busy streets at night, Provost creates an unsettling image of the metropolis, using film scores and fragments of dialogue from Japanese crime movies – which he synchs to his footage and ‘translates’ with subtitles (thought the text is entirely of Provost’s own invention). The results are hypnotic and underpinned by a sense of menace. The film – the third part of a trilogy of installation pieces on cities (following on from Plot Point and Star-

dust) – was made after Provost’s feature debut The Invader (which screened at IFFR 2012). “When I finished The Invader, I decided to spend a year working with visual arts and making short works, just for exhibitions”, says Provost. Attending IFFR to present Tokyo Giants, he has mixed thoughts about his experience with The Invader. The film was critically acclaimed but struggled to find distribution. For instance, it wasn’t released in France, despite its well-known, French-speaking cast. Provost speculates his status as a figure from the visual art world discouraged distributors. “The film industry just runs away from films that are labelled as artistic – especially today, after the [financial] crisis.” Provost arrived too late for the IFFR Art:Film panel this year, established to look at opportunities for collaboration between the art and film worlds. “I wanted to be

photo: Ruud Jonkers

there; I’m a visual artist, these are my people, this is the place for me to be.” Having spent this year returning to his visual-art practice (and relocating to New York), Provost is keen to learn from his frustrations with selling The Invader: “I need to boost myself and not think about cinema; just be with fine arts.” Revealing that he has started a new screenplay, he has also just acquired a US agent (with UTA) and is open to the idea of working in the States on someone else’s script. “My dream was not to become a Hollywood director, but I’m not afraid of it, if it’s the right project.”

Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films 5

Kevin Jerome Emerson is talking at the Pathé cinema minutes before the second public screening of The Island of St. Matthews, which received its world premiere in IFFR’s Spectrum strand. It’s an ruminative, visually striking portrait of an area around the Tombigbee River in Mississippi, where a flood occurred in 1973. The event is remembered by Emerson’s relatives, who live nearby, partly because it destroy a collection of family photographs. “I’m a trained photographer and sculptor and I always wanted old photographs to use and appropriate for my work”, he says. “I’d asked my aunt for them and she said, ‘We lost them in the flood’, and so it was always in the back of my head to do a film about the river.” Lovingly shot on 16mm, the movie extends Jerome’s interest with cinematic duration and location. Each roll of 16mm lasts for about 11 minutes, which Emerson thinks of as a “template” to capture specific events, such as the raising of the water in a levee that now guards against further flooding. Pleased with his IFFR premiere, Emerson is thinking about returning to his family roots in Mississippi for his next project. “My uncle shot someone in self-defence years ago, so I’m thinking of making a Rashamon-style piece about that.” Spectrum The Island of St. Matthews –

Kevin Jerome Emerson Wed 30 Jan 10:00 LV5

Tokyo Giants – Nicolas Provost Fri 01 Feb 10:15 PA3

INTERNATIONAL film festival rotterdam

Press & Industry Screenings Wednesday 30 January ADMISSION WITH P&I ACCREDITATION ONLY PROGRAMME CHANGES Spring Breakers Cinerama 5, 18:30 CANCELLED NEW: Call Girl Pathé 2, 09:45 NEW: Stoker Pathé 2, 12:30

de Doelen Jurriaanse Zaal

•FLM•

09:15 Dummy Jim [wp]

Matt Hulse, United Kingdom, 2013, DCP, 90 min, English/French, e.s.

Over 50 years ago, the deaf James Duthie biked from his Scottish ﬁshing village to the Arctic Circle and back again. Why? Just because. Hulse worked for 12 years on this visual mix of documentary and ﬁction. A treat for the eyes and ears. 11:15 Ixjana

15:00 Reality

•paars01•

Matteo Garrone, Italy/France, 2012, DCP, 115 min, Italian/English

Comedy about a man who, after auditioning in the famous Cinecittà studios, convinces himself he has been cast in Big Brother, then thinks he’s being spied on in his private life.

Pathé 2

Cinerama 4

•FLM•

09:00 La cinquième saison

•paars01•

Jessica Woodworth/Peter Brosens, Belgium/Netherlands/France, 2012, DCP, 94 min, French/Dutch, d.s.

Cinerama 6

•FLM•

09:15 De nieuwe wereld [wp]

•geel•

Jaap van Heusden, Netherlands, 2013, DCP, 85 min, Dutch, e.s.

Mirte is a cleaner in the reception centre for asylum seekers at the airport. She tries to forget her past through routine. When the charismatic West African Luc is brought in, Mirte seems to get a grip on her life again. A ﬁlm about loss, ﬂeeing and love from an unexpected corner.

The third part, after Khadak and Altiplano, of a trilogy about the difﬁcult relationship between man and nature. This time shot in the Wallonian area of Belgium. The apocalypse arrives in the form of a belated spring that drives the inhabitants to distraction.

Cinerama 5

11:30 Comrade Kim Goes Flying

•FLM•

10:15 Jiseul [ep]

•FLM•

Les chevaux de Dieu

•paars01•

Anja Daelemans/Nicholas Bonner/ Kim Gwang-Hun, Belgium/United Kingdom/North Korea, 2012, DCP, 81 min, Korean, e.s.

09:30 Model worker dreams of life as a O Muel, South Korea, 2012, Call Girl BF trapeze artist. The indestructibly DCP, 108 min, Korean, e.s. Mikael Marcimain, Sweden/ cheerful social-realist melodrama Black-and-white (anti-) war ﬁlm Ireland/Norway/Finland, 2012, and classically lit, colourful about the Korean army’s brutal DCP, 140 min, Swedish/English mise-en-scène are typically North suppression of the rebellion on Paranoid thriller based on a true Korean. Made with love and perJeju in 1948. The islanders ﬂed story about political corrupseverance by a Belgian, British, their villages and hid in primitive tion and underage call-girls in North Korean directing trio. circumstances. extremely progressive Sweden in the 1970s. In the way in which 13:00 the debutant Marcimain evokes Kid SP LantarenVenster 3 the mood of the 1970s, he can vie Fien Troch, Belgium/Germany/ with maestro Tomas Alfredson Netherlands, 2012, DCP, 90 min, Dutch 09:00 (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy).Please Krivina [ip] BF note: the public screenings of Igor Drljaca, Canada/Bosnia Call Girl will be with Dutch suband Herzegovina, 2012, titles in stead of the aforemenVideo, 70 min, Bosnian, e.s. tioned English subtitles. •paars01•

•geel•

Józef Skolimowski/Michal Skolimowski, Poland, 2012, DCP, 98 min, Polish, e.s.

The young, successful writer Marek tries to explain the puzzling death of his friend Arthur. In order to do that, he enters into an alliance with a sinister ﬁgure. Psychological thriller drama by the Skolimowksi Jr. brothers does not shy away from the occult. 13:15 Les chevaux de Dieu

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•FLM•

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Nabil Ayouch, Morocco/France/ Belgium, 2012, DCP, 115 min, French

12:30 Stoker [ip]

It is dusty and hectic in the Moroccan slums where the brothers Yachine and Hamid grow up in a world of drugs and crime. Gruesome ﬁlm in which a poverty-stricken community becomes a breeding ground for Islamic fundamentalism and extremism.

•paars01•

Park Chan-Wook, South Korea, 2012, DCP, 99 min, English

Psychological thriller. After the death of India’s father, she and her unstable mother meet an unknown uncle ﬁgure. India suspects the mysterious charmer of hidden motives. With Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode and Nicole Kidman. Closing Film, IFFR 2013.

de Doelen Willem Burger Zaal 10:30 Karaoke Girl [wp]

Cinerama 3

Visra Vichit Vadakan, Thailand, 2013, 35mm, 77 min, Thai, e.s.

•FLM•

09:45 Paradies: Glaube

Karaoke is not always nice for everyone. Because you’re too shy to sing. Or because you are forced to satisfy the audience with more than just your voice. This sensitive look behind the screens shows the life of an escort girl and the poor idyll she hails from. 12:45 Roland Hassel [ip]

•geel•

Heartrending story, stern camera. The boy Kid lives with his elder brother and mother on a farm. The father has left them and their ﬁnancial situation is disastrous, that much can be deducted from the scanty, moving details offered by director Fien Troch.

15:30 No

For Annamaria, paradise lies in Jesus. She devotes her time to missionary work, so that Austria may be brought back to the path of virtue. One day, after years of absence, her husband, an Egyptian Muslim returns home. Hymns and prayers are now joined by arguments.

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Bosnian immigrant returns to his fatherland looking for an old friend who was involved in war crimes. In the war, the protagonist did not just lose his friend and his country, but above all himself. Surrealist and hypnotic debut, in which nothing is what it seems.

10:30 Rhino Season

•blauw•

Bahman Ghobadi, Kurdistan/ Turkey, 2012, DCP, 90 min, Farsi/English/Turkish, e.s.

Sunshine Boys

A political indictment and an epic love tragedy by IFFR audience-award winner Bahman Ghobadi (Turtles Can Fly), with Monica Bellucci playing the lead. Visually stunning and a cinematographic experience: a must-see on the big screen.

•blauw•

Pablo Larraín, Chile, 2011, Video, 120 min, Spanish, e.s.

Krivina

•geel•

Pablo Larraín, Chile/France/USA, 2012, DCP, 118 min, Spanish

Chilean adman (Gael García Bernal) doesn’t know much about politics. But when the opposition is allowed to hold a referendum on Pinochet, he knows one thing for sure: ‘No’ can only win with a happy campaign. Made by the master chronicler of the Pinochet era: Larrain.

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21:00 Prófugos [ep]

Ulrich Seidl, Austria/France/Germany, 2012, DCP, 113 min, German, d.s.

Måns Månsson, Sweden, 2012, 35mm, 74 min, Swedish, e.s.

12:15 Sunshine Boys [ip]

The unsolved murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme (1986) is the greatest trauma in modern Swedish history. Roland Hassel, well-known detective and ﬁlm character, re-examined the facts after his retirement. Deconstruction of documentary reconstructions, shot in gritty VHS style. Funny and serious.

12:30 The Master

Larraín’s take on the bleak reality of life in Chile in his ﬁrst series for HBO Latin America. A riveting action series about a drug deal that collapses. Escape seems the only option, but nothing is what it seems. And who are they running from actually? The law or the mob?

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Paul Thomas Anderson, USA, 2012, 70mm, 137 min, English

Focuses on special relationship between sect leader Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his follower, the tormented alcoholic Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix). The powerful performances and perfectly executed visual style make this the must-see of the year.

•geel•

Kim Tae-Gon, South Korea, 2012, DCP, 85 min, Korean, e.s.

Two students visit their school friend who has a weekend’s leave from military service. Subtle, melancholy drama about friendship, class differences and growing up in a very Korean setting. Beautiful supporting role by actress Kim Kkobbi (Breathless).

Ixjana

Stoker

VALID WITH THE FOOD & DRINKS CARD

VALID WITH THE FOOD & DRINKS CARD Jiseul

111 Girls Nahid Ghobadi / Bijan Zamanpira

79’

90’

Odayaka Uchida Nobuteru

100’

My Dog Killer Mira Fornay

Guido van Driel

90’

Ricky Rijneke

They’ll Come Back Marcelo Lordello

11:30 Silent Ones 11.00 12.00

11:15

105’

114’

13:30

Hill of Pleasures Maria Ramos

97’

13.00

09:15

Sébastien Rose

St. Matthews

70’

12:15

95’

12:30

11:45

Melaza Carlos Lechuga

Kalter Frühling Dominik Graf

12:00

88’

89’

104’

Ping’an Yueqing Ai Weiwei

Odd Couples verzamelprogramma

12:00

Chekhov’s Motifs Kira Muratova

Vergiss mein nicht David Sieveking

12:00

80’

14:45

Lore Cate Shortland

15:30

120’

17.00

CC 240’

Ifa Isfansyah

142’

BF 75’

Judy Kibinge

SP 70’

verzamelprogramma

14:00 Ai Is Japanese for Love SH

Ying Liang

Falls

14:15 When Night

101’

Paula Gladstone

The Dancing Soul...

15:00 La pionnière

Poor Folk Midi Z

Sleepless Night Jang Kun-Jae

14:30

84’

Necessary

15:00 Something

Mai morire Enrique Rivero

14:00

102’

96’

16:30

76’

105’

16:30

135’

18:30

102’

80’

90’

84’

90’

SH 85’

SP 115’

100’

19:00

19:15

87’

19:15

118’

19:15

85’

Spieler Dominik Graf

90’

89’

90 Minutes Eva Sørhaug

Jeremy Teicher

Baobab Tree

19:30 Tall as the

83’

84’

69’

21:45

116’

92’

82’

98’

21:45

Kayan Maryam Najafi

09:15

09:00

70’

10:30

85’

113’

140’

108’

12:15

90’

12:45

98’

12:30

81’

Kid Fien Troch

85’

NEW

The Master Paul Thomas Anderson

13:00

Sunshine Boys Kim Tae-Gon

Park Chan-Wook

Stoker

14.00

74’

99’

90’

Les chevaux de Dieu Nabil Ayouch

13.00

13:15

Roland Hassel Måns Månsson

12:30 closing film:

diverse regisseurs

Goes Flying

NEW

74’

11:30 Comrade Kim

Rhino Season Bahman Ghobadi

Jiseul O Muel

De nieuwe wereld Jaap van Heusden

10:15

94’

Paradies: Glaube Ulrich Seidl

09:45

Call Girl Mikael Marcimain

Krivina LantarenVenster 3 Igor Drljaca

Cinerama 6

Cinerama 5

09:00

90’

12.00

Ixjana Józef Skolimowski / Michal Skolimowski

11.00

11:15

Karaoke Girl TG Visra Vichit Vadakan

09:45

10:30

10.00

La cinquième saison Cinerama 4 Jessica Woodworth / Peter Brosens

Cinerama 3

Pathé 2

de Doelen Willem Burgerzaal

de Doelen Jurriaanse Zaal

Dummy Jim Matt Hulse

09.00

09:15

137’

15:00

15:30

16.00

No Pablo Larraín

Reality Matteo Garrone

115’

15.00 SP

SP 115’

17.00

118’

18:30

18.00

Spring Breakers Harmony Korine

19.00

SP 92’

20.00

21:00

21:45

Leones Jazmín López

Mouly Surya

21:45

Ultimately

Stom Sogo

22:00 Stom Sogo:

92’

Mike Ott

Hwy

Prófugos Pablo Larraín

21.00

22.00

82’

80’

120’

23.00

22:15 Pearblossom

GFP Bunny Tsuchiya Yutaka

Second Class Citizens Kira Muratova

When They Talk About Love

verzamelprogramma

81’

80’

90’

101’

Rocking the Cradle

22:15 Guimarães:

97’

86’

137’

119’

86’

96’

120’

21:45 What They Don’t Talk About BF

105’

90’

107’

23.00

Das Gelübde Dominik Graf

47’

22:30

Monica Stambrini 47’

103’

21:45 Sedia elettrica – Il

making-of del film Io e te

The Delivery Guy Andrey Stempkovsky

21:30 Dummy

21:30

80’

Silent Ones Ricky Rijneke

Watchtower Pelin Esmer

22:00

22:15

First Comes Love Nina Davenport

Richard Raaphorst

Los salvajes Alejandro Fadel

Post tenebras lux Carlos Reygadas

21:30

84’

21:15

Roland Hassel Måns Månsson

20:15 Förår

Chen Chieh-jen

Building 1

19:45 Happiness

Me Too Alexey Balabanov

Siegrid Alnoy

19:30 Miroir mon amour SP

Centro histórico diverse regisseurs

Alone Wang Bing

verzamelprogramma

Think You Can Act

20:00

Io e te Bernardo Bertolucci

104’

70’

98’

Michiel ten Horn

19:45 TV Night: So You CC

19:45

De nieuwe wereld Jaap van Heusden

74’

110’

Eva van End

Shalimar Preuss

65’

Army

22:30 Frankenstein’s

21:30 Ma belle gosse 21.00 22.00

Kamran Heydari

20:30 De ontmaagding van

Vladimir Todorovic

Landscape

19:15 Disappearing

L’ étoile du jour Sophie Blondy

160’

18:45

72’

68’

Miss Lovely Ashim Ahluwalia

Pieta Kim Ki-Duk

137’

19:15

Negahdar Jamali ...

20:45 My Name Is

20.00 Nordvest Michael Noer

19:30 Big Talk

19.00

Karaoke Girl TG Visra Vichit Vadakan

18:45

I.D. Kamal Karamattathil Muhammed

Kalayaan Adolfo B. Alix Jr.

17:30

Avanti popolo Michael Wahrmann

17:00 Dogs Are Said to See ...

Riri Riza

Celsius

Hotte im Paradies Dominik Graf

Torres & cometas Gonçalo Tocha

17:15 Ao Lobo da Madragoa SP

SP Inori Pedro González-Rubio

Leaving Traces verzamelprogramma

16:45

104’

95’

140’

Steel Is the Earth Mes De Guzman

17:15

16:45 Atambua 39°

89’

17:00

109’

80’

18.00

Modest Reception Mani Haghighi

Ma belle gosse Shalimar Preuss

17:00

UPCinema-dag

90’

Hill of Pleasures Maria Ramos

Bellas mariposas Salvatore Mereu

A Fallible Girl Conrad Clark

16:15

My Dog Killer Mira Fornay

16:00

One Day When the Rain Falls

Faces James Benning

76’ 16:30

Call Girl Mikael Marcimain

Brief Encounters Kira Muratova

15:30

A. Kennedy / I. Wiblin

14:15 The Flaneurs #3

120’

105’

91’

87’

80’

14:00

90’

80’

13:45 Men of the Earth

They’ll Come Back Marcelo Lordello

Manoel de Oliveira

Matterhorn Diederik Ebbinge 13:15 Soegija Garin Nugroho

Shadow

94’

16:15

16.00

15:30 Lesson of the Evil SP Miike BF Takashi Miss Lovely 129’ Ashim Ahluwalia 110’ 14:15 Jirafas 16:30 The Master SP 15:00 The View from Paul Thomas Anderson BF Enrique Álvarez SP

Our House

85’

BF De nieuwe wereld 14.00 15.00 Jaap van Heusden

Alexandra Gulea

Miner

13:15 Matei Child

13:00 Gebo and the

13:00

Dummy Jim Matt Hulse

75’

Burning Bush Agnieszka Holland

100’

11:45

130’

11:30

11:15

107’

96’

Kevin Jerome Everson

10:00 The Island of

Die Sieger Dominik Graf

Parviz Majid Barzegar

Misericordia Khavn de la Cruz

11:00 How to Raise ...

72’

Cherchez Hortense Pascal Bonitzer

70’

09:30 Avant que mon coeur

bascule

10:00

Vladimir Todorovic

Landscape

Avanti popolo BF Michael Wahrmann

09:15 Disappearing

09:45

61’

14:00

David Verbeek

How to Describe a Cloud

Admission with P&I accreditation only Press & Industry Screenings Wednesday 30 January Press & Industry Screenings Wednesday 30 January

LantarenVenster 6

LantarenVenster 5

LantarenVenster 3

LantarenVenster 2

LantarenVenster 1

Cinerama 7

Cinerama 6

Cinerama 4

Cinerama 3

Cinerama 2

Cinerama 1

Pathé 7

Pathé 6

Pathé 5

Pathé 4

Pathé 3

Pathé 2 LantarenVenster 3

Pathé 1 Cinerama 6

Gonçalo Tocha

09:00 Lesson of the Evil BF Oude Luxor NEW SP 11:30 Blancanieves Pablo Berger Cinerama 3 Miike Takashi 129’ 104’ de Doelen 09:30 Mater Dolorosa 12:00 Lukas the Strange SP SP Jurriaanse Zaal Adolfo B. Alix Jr. John Torres Cinerama 4 86’ 85’ Schouwburg 09:00 Torres & 10:45 Steel Is the Earth 13:00 Die Welt SP SP Grote Zaal Mes De Guzman Alex Pitstra Cinerama 5 cometas

Pathé 5

09:00 De wederopstanding

TG 09.00 10.00 van een klootzak

09:15

Pathé 2 Programmaschema woensdag 30 januari Public Screenings Wednesday 30 January

de Doelen Jurriaanse Zaal

24.00

92’

24.00

Een greep uit het geheugen van de cinema. Met aandacht voor het experiment, gerestaureerde klassiekers, speciale evenementen en exposities, en de huidige opvattingen over film, geschiedenis en beeldcultuur. Vast onderdeel van de sectie Signals.

Signals: Regained

Niet beeld, maar geluid staat centraal in Sound Stages. Het festival als jukebox, met een keur aan filmische klankervaringen en live performances, installaties, optredens en films die de oren strelen. Binnen, maar nadrukkelijk ook buiten de bioscoopzaal.

Signals: Sound Stages

De fraaiste voorbeelden van ‘episodic storytelling’ met televisie- en internetseries die gemaakt zijn door onafhankelijke filmmakers, voor één keer groot(s) te zien op het scherm of in de speciale weblounge in Cinerama.

Signals: Changing Channels

Actuele Iraanse cinema en videokunst, afkomstig uit het levendige undergroundcircuit van Teheran waar galeries ontmoetingsplaatsen zijn voor makers en publiek.

Signals: Inside Iran

Voor het eerst is het volledige oeuvre van een van de meest uitzonderlijke Oost-Europese kunstenaars van de afgelopen vijftig jaar buiten Rusland en Oekraïne te zien. Een onnavolgbaar en onweerstaanbaar oeuvre dat geen grenzen kent.

Signals: Kira Muratova

Retrospectief van Dominik Graf, de belangrijkste chroniqueur van het hedendaagse Duitsland. Met een oeuvre van zestig producties – voornamelijk voor televisie – het best bewaarde geheim van de Duitstalige film.

Signals: Dominik Graf

De kracht van kort: films van één tot negenenvijftig minuten lang, uit alle windstreken. Ze worden gebundeld in verzamelprogramma’s of in combinatie met lange films vertoond.

Spectrum Shorts

Rotterdam op zijn breedst. Het festival selecteerde actueel, krachtig en vernieuwend werk uit alle windstreken, van veteranen tot minder bekende regisseurs.

Spectrum

Vers bloed. Eerste of tweede speelfilm van filmmakers waarvan het festival in de toekomst nog veel goeds verwacht.

Bright Future

Prijzen voor kort maar krachtig. Drieëntwintig films korter dan zestig minuten zijn geselecteerd voor deze competitie, waarin drie gelijkwaardige Canon Tiger Awards for Short Films te winnen zijn.

Tiger Awards Competitie voor Korte Films

Prijzen voor de nieuwe generatie. Zestien genomineerde filmmakers strijden met hun eerste of tweede speelfilm om drie gelijkwaardige Hivos Tiger Awards.

Hivos Tiger Awards Competitie

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