Festivals: IFFR
Rotterdam 2024 Review: ROME: TALES FROM THE BLOCK, A Slight Alien Invasion Satire
La Guerra Del Tiburtino III has as its international title Rome: Tales From the Block, which shows you how much this film wears its influences on its sleeve. From the opening segment, in which an alien creature leaves a meteor...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: KING BABY Is A Royal Triumph
King Baby, by directors Kit Redstone and Arran Shearing, could've gone wrong in so many ways. The film is a send-up of masculine power plays, toxic machismo and the thin veneer of social niceties that hide volcanic violence waiting to...
Rotterdam 2024: What The Audiences Liked Best
Three weeks ago, Rotterdam was about to wrap up its International Film Festival, and a few days after that they published the final results of their audience rating ballots. These, to me, are always at least as interesting as the...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: 13 BOMBS Brings Fire And Noise
The International Film Festival Rotterdam is know for its slant towards new talent, often featuring low-budget arthouse cinema from all over the world. But the festival sometimes also shows the big-budget blockbusters from countries of which the output almost never...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: LA LUNA, Naughty In The Nicest Way
This year, the International Film Festival Rotterdam started with the fairly inoffensive comedy-drama Head South (reviewed here), and it closed with an equally inoffensive film: M. Raihan Halim's Singaporean small-town comedy La Luna. In it, we see the daily life...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: THE LIGHT Points Attention To An Art Scandal
In May 1995, Denmark was celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the end of its occupation by the Nazis during World War 2, and many festivities were planned. As part of these, an art installation called 'Peace Sculpture 1995' was greenlit...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: MILK TEETH, Werewolves Or Weren't Wolves?
The International Film Festival Rotterdam is primarily an arthouse festival, but that doesn't mean there is no genre representation there. Indeed, with some titles you get both flavors. Director Sophia Bösch' Swiss/German film Milk Teeth certainly can be classified as...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: BLUE GIANT Hits All Notes
The Japanese anime director Tachikawa Yuzuru isn't quite a household name yet, despite having directed the stylish Death Parade series and the totally (and tonally) bonkers series Mob Psycho 100. But his film adaptation of Ishizuka Shinichi's famous manga Blue...
Rotterdam 2024 Interview: Per Fly And Mikael Persbrandt Talk About HAMMARSKJÖLD
Danish director Per Fly's new film Hammarskjöld - Fight for Peace is getting rave reviews from around the world. At the International Film Festival Rotterdam it scored a terrific audience rating of 4.6 out of 5, with the biopic landing...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: KISS WAGON Proves That Liking A Movie Isn't All Black And White
Kiss Wagon, by director Midhun Murali is an epic, 3 hour shadow play animation, that is at the same time both minimalist and maximalist. It is also, somehow, undercooked and overbaked, too convoluted and holding the viewers hand too much;...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: THE PARAGON, No-Budget Comedy About A Psychic Loser Is A Winner
Micheal Duignan's The Paragon might be his debut feature, but he has a storied career as a director of music videos, short comedy movies, television soaps and episodes of the new Power Rangers series. Somehow, this eclectic blend of...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: THE ARCTIC CONVOY Provides Chilling Suspense
The International Film Festival Rotterdam has many international premières for its audiences, one of which was Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken's war drama Konvoi a.k.a. The Arctic Convoy. Solidly researched and excellently executed, Dahlsbakken's film tells a story about the Norwegian ships...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: SLIDE, A Musical Western Satire By Bill Plympton
This year, the International Film Festival Rotterdam had independent animation legend Bill Plympton as a special guest. He was interviewed, performed a masterclass, showing how his style of animation worked, drew sketches for attendants, the lot. A true gentleman. Also,...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: FLATHEAD, Australian Pastoral
Australian filmmaker Jaydon Martin blurs the lines between documentary and narrative storytelling, offering a lyrical exploration of life's complexities through the lens of a blue-collar community in rural Australia.
Rotterdam 2024 Review: TENEMENT, A Haunted House With A Weak Foundation
Tenement proves that a good ghost story can't get by on visuals alone. This Cambodian genre film by Inrasothythep Neth and Sokyou Chea deserves some praise because it is the rare horror effort out of that country. But when...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: HUNGRY GHOST DINER Offers A Feast For The Eyes And Soul
Bonnie is the sole employee of a food truck, having fallen in love with cooking after a slightly magical-realist experience she had as a child. When she meets up with her estranged uncle, lines between life and death, dream...
Rotterdam 2024: THE SOUL EATER Blends Police Procedural With Fantasy Horror
When Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury stormed onto the scene with A L'Interieur it was with a promise that was central to the appeal of that film: "we are not gonna pull any punches". As important linchpins of the...
Rotterdam 2024 Review: HAMMARSKJÖLD - FIGHT FOR PEACE, A High-Octane Portrait Of The Diplomat´s Final Crusade
Swedish director Per Fly dramatizes the last days of Dag Hammarskjöld in a biopic merged with a political thriller.
Rotterdam 2024 Review: STEPPENWOLF, No Country for Sane Men
Kazakh filmmaker Adilkhan Yerzhanov delivers his most nihilistic work to date.
Rotterdam 2024 Review: FULL RIVER RED Is A Million Shades Of Grey
Chinese director Zhang Yimou is a superstar and there is no mistaking that when watching his latest film Full River Red. It's an almost impossibly lush film in its production values, with money bleeding off of the screen in every...
