2023
Opening film
Wednesday 25 January
Munch, Dahlsbakken, Norway, 4
Edvard Munch was one of the most important artists in the period between the 19th
and 20th centuries. His motif Skrik (The Scream), repeated in several techniques,
became part of the 20th-
For Norwegian maverick auteur Henrik Martin Dahlsbakken, Munch was above all an outsider by choice. But this is merely one of his many sides. Munch was someone different to different people: skandalon, freethinker, sexual adventurer, bore, genius – you name it, someone saw it in him, usually with good reason. This made Dahlsbakken split the role of Munch over several actors, the same way that the character appears in different times.
Thursday
Another spring, Mladen Kovacevis, Servie, 4
In 1972, Ibrahim Hoti undertook the Hajj, travelling to Mecca on a spiritual pilgrimage. On the return journey, his bus made an unscheduled stop at the bustling Baghdad bazaar, where he bought gifts for his family. Within a day of his return to Kosovo, Hoti began to feel feverish.
Composed entirely of archival footage, and narrated by the burnt-
Very funny to see how Ibrahim is on national TV as the cause of the outbreak.
Friday
El Puno del Condor, Espinoza, Chile, 4 (with Jeroen)
Reliance on special effects is kept to a minimum, as Zaror and his co-
Superposition, Lyngbye, Denmark, 5
Stine and Teit, your average urban middle-
The subject of reflections and doubles is introduced in the film’s first shot: a view of a lake landscape turned 90° so that the water’s surface runs vertically through the image’s centre. Only once the shot gets tilted is it revealed which side mirrors which. Later, a mother and child are reflected in a glass door.
Saturday
By the shore and kabaret, VR show in Worm, 4
VR movies with underwater swimming colouring corals and the other one on a Japanese beach with a big dead whale.
Vera, Covi, Austria, 3 (with Yolanda)
The burdens of the rich and famous are expertly illuminated in this heart-
Orgy of the damned, 2
a dream-
Sunday
Kira & El Gin, Marwan Hamed, Egypt, 4
Cairo, 1919. The Great War has left Egyptian soldiers of the Empire traumatised, the Spanish Flu has ravaged the country and nationalist leaders are being deported amid fervent protests. Unfazed by the tumult, Abdel Qader, an apolitical drug peddler known as the Jinn, continues to do business with the colonisers. But when injustice comes knocking, he finds himself joining hands with an underground resistance unit led by Ahmed Kira, a physician in the good books of the British.
Great movie, with a lot of speed and action and nice over the top acting.
Follower, Nalawade, India, 4
Sraghu is a small-
With a razor-
La Paliasiada, Sotnychenko, Ukrain, 3
Bit grim film about the execution by the state of a man in 1996.
Monday
Cairo Conspiracy, Tarik Saleh, Sweden, 5
The film centres on the election of a new grand imam through the Supreme Council
of Scholars congregating at Al-
When Colonel Ibrahim sends Adam, a novice on campus, out there to be his eyes and ears and, if necessary, his hands, we are left questioning: Which side and which faction is he really working for?
Dalva, Emmanuelle Nicot, Belgium, 5
Best film of the festival and winner of audience award. Emmanuelle Nicot portrays
the journey of a girl at the cusp of teenager-
Eschewing the sensationalism typical of child captive cases, and drawing on her research in an emergency shelter for young victims of abuse, Nicot focuses on Dalva’s confusion as she is abruptly severed from Jacques and lodged in a youth shelter. She enters this new world with outrage and resistance, struggling to come to terms with learning that the love she shared with her father was not what she thought it was.
Through Dalva, Nicot unveils a past of trauma, control and deceit inflicted by the
young girl's father, who substituted his daughter for his estranged wife – the similarity
in clothing becomes evident in a mother-
Dalva’s shift to life in a shelter is initially jarring, and adding to her alienation is the arrival of puberty, leaving her torn between clinging to her conditioning as an adult woman and the yearning to salvage the remnants of her childhood. Gradually, the support of her roommate, Samia, and a social worker, Jayden, undermines the illusions created by her father's manipulations, challenging Dalva’s very idea of self and swaying her to reframe her life as she discovers her youth and the camaraderie of adolescence.
Kamli, Khoosat, Pakistan, 4
“Houses don’t suffocate you; they protect you”, says Sakina to her sister-
Pakistani filmmaker Sarmad Khoosat’s Kamli develops this simple, fairy-
The film draws energy from the idioms of both realist drama and Bollywood musicals.
DemiGod: the legend begins, Wen-
a baroque puppet animation wuxia epic that synthesises traditional and modern storytelling
techniques to sumptuous effect. It has everything: magic, madness, heaven, sin, love,
treason, high emotion, heroic bloodshed and attractive-
Blind Willow sleeping woman, Pierre Foldes, France, 5, with FEU
Adapted from Haruki Murakami’s short stories, Pierre Földes’ animated debut feature Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman sketches the lives of three Tokyo residents thrown into a whirlpool of anxiety and introspection following the 2011 earthquake in eastern Japan.
Dazed by televised reports of the disaster, Kyoko leaves her husband Komura to pursue
a strange event that took place on her twentieth birthday. To make sense of her sudden
disappearance, a stunned Komura drifts across the country from one acquaintance to
another. Meanwhile, his elderly colleague, the timid Katagiri, is visited by a six-
Thursday
Untold Herstory, Zero Chou, Taiwan, 4
It’s 1953 and martial law has been imposed on Taiwan. The White Terror period lasted
over four decades, and was alert to slightest hints of dissent. This is a story of
female ‘thought prisoners’ confined to Green Island, a penal colony off Taiwan’s
eastern coast, who couldn’t stop thinking. They’re only let out of their barracks
to sit through ‘re-
Nostalgia, Martone, Italy, 4
Middle-
La Montana, Osorno, Mexico, 2, with Jeroen
What happens when you put 7 Zapatista’s with some German lefties on a boat? A boring movie with many discussions that go nowhere.
I can’t stop biting you, Mamoru, Japan, 4. With Jeroen
the film portrays the four, very different teenage members of a ‘Blood Donation Club’, schoolgirls who have alienated themselves from the dreary, conformist pack through their unusual obsession – regular blood donations. Into their lives crashes the dangerously beautiful Mai Vlad Transylvania, a vampire ‘teenager’ who happens to be unable to attack humans. A mix of satire, mystery, cartoonish frenzy, delightful goofiness and teenage drama
Friday
Skazka, Sokurov, Russia, 4
In Skazka, Alexander Sokurov weaves digital magic to create a phantasmagorical vision of the Afterlife, worthy of Dante. But wait: are we in the limbo of Purgatory, or a paradoxical Paradise reserved for notorious men of world history? Mussolini, Stalin, Hitler, Churchill and more: all are present and accounted for. Since they exist only as archival media images, each figure comes in a serial set.
In the blackest of political comedies, these fallen men beg, in turn, to be let through Heaven’s Gate – but the angels who peek through never open wide. Little wonder, as the former leaders wander listlessly, bitching (in a Babel of multiple languages) about each other’s clothes, hair and hygiene.
A light never goes out, Tsang, Hong Kong, 4
Introduced in the 1920s and boosted by post-
Anastasia Tsang’s feature-
The Whale, Aronofsky, USA, 4
Charlie is a writing instructor, well-
Surprise movie with penelope Cruz, L’immonate, Italy. 1-
As tradition prescribes, the IFFR shows every year a terrible movie to show what we miss during the rest of the year. As to the reviews a tender, intensely personal portrait of dysfunctional family in 1970s Rome. But Penelope Cruz’s performance as Clara, an unhappily married mother of three coping with mental health issues will cause you mental problems as well if it were not for her beauty.
Saturday
Orphea in love, Axel Ranisch, Germany, 5
Orphea in Love is a singular piece of musical theatre cinema. Structurally a musical
or operetta, it features famous opera tunes paired with modern classical ballet choreographies.
the story of young, multi-
Lola, Legge, Ireland, 4
The ingeniously low-
Pieced together in dazzling 16mm as an imaginary collage of interlocking audio-
Inu-
Wow! A cultural revolution is afoot in 14th century Japan. Tomona, a blind priest
and biwa player, and Inu-
Veteran animator Yuasa Masaaki pushes his tendency to commingle realism and fantasy
to its limits, reimagining the two dissident artists as modern-
One Win, Sokurov,Yeon-
Let the enthralling match sequences toss you onto the court and into the heat of
the volleyball game. Meet the two league outcasts: Kim Woo-
Showing up, Reichardt, USA, 3
Artist Lizzy struggles with life.
Triton |
Study time |
Erasmus work |
Economic affairs |
Foreign Affairs |
Finance / Euro |
EU enlargement |
Global health |
WHO |
Verspilling |
Palliative care |
Comparing LTC |
Ageing |
Support |
Innovation |
Covid-19 |
NY marathon |
Balkan Blues |
Paris Texas |
Camping with lions |
Barcelona - Villareal |
Kazachstan |
Zweden |
Belfast |
euro |
Bedelen om rust |
bedelen h1 |
bedelen h2 |
bedelen h3 |
bedelen h4 |
bedelen h5 |
bedelen h6 |
bedelen h7 |
bedelen h8 |
bedelen h9 |
bedelen h10 |
bedelen h11 |
bedelen h12 |
bedelen naschrift |
1997 |
1998 |
1999 |
2000 |
2001 |
2002 |
2003 |
2004 |
2005 |
2006 |
2007 |
2008 |
2009 |
2010 |
2011 |
2012 |
2014 |
2015 |
2016 |
2017 |
2018 |
2019 |
2020 |
2021 winter |
2021 summer |
2023 |
2022 |
Freathening |
Cosmology |
faces |
summaries |