These films can be relevant in understanding the rather ‘complicated’ Arab-Israeli conflict. Through the striking visuals and cinematography in Giovanni C. Lorusso’s Song of All Ends, the powerfully ethical research and editing in Kamal Aljafari’s UNDR, a personal-public ode to friendship in Yvann Yagchi’s Avant, il n’y avait rien, and a poetic and absurdist political commentary on hunger in Diana Al-Halabi’s The Battle of the Empty Stomachs, the films offer the audience a chance to see that the struggle and misery of Palestinians did not begin on the 7th of October 2023, but may well continue and escalate unless peace, accountability, and co-existence prevail.

The backlash and overkill by Israeli forces that followed the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas militants has left over 27,000 dead and more than 2.3 million people on the fringe of death from starvation and cold in Gaza, trapped between the Egyptian border and Israeli bombardments in the north and south of the now-shattered and torn Gaza Strip.

Diana Al-Halabi, a Lebanese artist and filmmaker based in Rotterdam, dedicates The Battle of the Empty Stomachs to residents of the Gaza Strip facing bombardment by Israeli forces. She positions herself from the start in an Arabic monologue. “I once knew fasting. The kind my mother told me about….to sympathize with the poor”; the fasting that most people who grew up in religious Muslim families know. What about hunger strikers and starving refugees?

Funded by the RTM Pitch Prize at IFFR 2023, the mid-length film is divided into different sections. Basing her story on real accounts by former Palestinian prisoners who went on strike, Al-Halabi poetically compares a prisoner in an Israeli detention center, who consciously goes on a hunger strike to demand basic rights, with a displaced refugee who is desperately trying to fetch anything edible. Al-Halabi’s bold film questions the mundane representations of hunger, and shows how it can be used as a tool of resistance. She positions two characters on either end of a playground seesaw, with a tall table in between them. Standing in the middle is a woman IDF soldier who takes trays of food and salt from the displaced refugee and tries to force it on the prisoner. When the latter refuses it, she places it in a location in a table where the former can see it but cannot reach it.

Out of the four, Avant, il n’y avait rien is by far the most calm and personal. Swiss-Palestinian director Yvann Yagchi shows in this beautiful ode to friendship how much he regrets its end, but at the same time how he feels no guilt that it ended. He follows his childhood and teenage best friend, who opted to move from Switzerland and live in an Israeli settlement built on Palestinian lands. The documentary begins as their mutual project.

Yagchi travels to the settlement, trying to understand its reality, while his hidden agenda is to piece together what is left of their friendship. He meets his friend’s children, wife, neighbours, even his rabbi, and attends Passover celebrations. But his Palestinian origin is targeted by the exclusivity and discriminatory rhetoric in the settlements, words which are especially painful coming from his best friend.

When the end of the friendship comes, it changes the course of the whole documentary.

The friend decides to withdraw from the project and threatens to sue. Yagchi defiantly decides to continue the film alone with even more determination, not to seek reconciliation, but to explore his own anger. He takes his camera and digs deeper into the history of his family, who were displaced in the 1948 Nakba. So he interviews his mother, visits East Jerusalem and the separation wall, and holds imaginary conversations with his great-grandfather, while staying in an Israeli-owned motel which used to be his office before the establishment of Israel.

Avant, il n’y avait rien shows the reality of the settlements in current times, close to suburban neighborhoods and with all amenities, contrasting them to the poverty of Palestinian villages. However, in Kamal Aljafari’s 15-minute short UNDR, the film problematizes the establishment of settlements. Aljafari’s filmography begins in 2003 when he started using documentary and archival footage to reestablish the histories of places that are no longer there, except in memory.

In UNDR, only archival footage is used, mostly from helicopter vantage points (implying surveillance and absolute control) on archaeological sites, now construction sites, of what used to be Palestinian villages. Nearby, caught between Israel and Palestine, are villagers and Bedouins still living in a primitive way. Footage shows controlled yet massive explosions set off by construction experts, to make way for crews who will build newer settlements that are artificially greener and more modern. There is no dialogue, no interviews, only footage likely taken by a construction company or a government agency to document the building process. But within this lies a harsh condemnation.

The only feature film on the list is Giovanni C. Lorusso’s Song of All Ends, which tells the story of the Alhaddad family living in the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, 16 months after the city’s deadly port explosion. Neither Shatila nor the family are new to crises. Along with the Sabra camp, Shatila witnessed one of the deadliest massacres in the Lebanese civil war in 1982, killing hundreds — possibly thousands — of civilians. Shot in black and white, Song of All Ends portrays the suspended life of a family attempting to heal after learning of their daughter’s death in the 2020 explosion. A slow-burn plot reveals how this trauma is reflected in the family’s everyday interactions, but also in the surrounding community. Filmed in the Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian residential communities of the Shatila Camp, the film’s grim yet elegant cinematography uses closeups and steadicam footage to capture the residents’ bored and hopeless faces.

Although historically IFFR has been never shied away from promoting Palestinian cinema and its voices of peace and co-existence, this year the festival deserves kudos for bravely programming these four films (and keeping them in the selection) at a time when Europe is tempted to ban and silence peaceful and secular pro-Palestinian voices, whether they are European, Jewish, queer, from the Middle East or immigrant backgrounds.

Having these films screening in Europe is essential, not necessarily to advocate for the Palestinian cause, but to allow Palestinians and Israelis to regard each other as humans.

More impressively, Murali and his creative partner Greeshma Ramachandran appear to have painstakingly created this entire three-hour epic in their home studio during Covid lockdown as a DIY project, sharing most of the key technical roles and character voices between them. A world premiere at Rotterdam Film Festival, where it has just won the Special Jury Award and the FIPRESCI prize, Kiss Wagon is a monumental labour of love that demands patience and indulgence. Loopy and repetitive, the storytelling elements could comfortably have been much shorter and sharper. Even so, this is a ravishing exercise in style and technique which should appeal to connoisseurs of cutting-edge animation and Indian art-house cinema.

The full plot of Kiss Wagon is too dense, diffuse and frankly nonsensical to summarise here. But a few basics: the setting is a mythical nation where a shadowy military-industrial-religious elite are using bogus spiritual faith to control the population, passing off natural phenomena like “space clouds” as grand divine interventions, and promoting the dutiful worship of a Jesus-like deity called Eebah at vast rave-style concert events. In an inspired use of visual metaphor, one key effect of this oppressive fake religion is to drain the universe of colour. Hence the vast majority of Murali’s film is shot in elegant monochrome, but bookended by vivid polychromatic sequences.

Meanwhile, a clandestine resistance movement to is fighting back against the regime in subtle ways, spreading dissent via underground film clubs, hacking the government’s computer systems, disarming their weapons of mass delusion. An unlikely player in this civil disobedience plot is Isla (voiced by Ramachandran), a young woman who runs her own parcel delivery business. Tasked with delivering a “kiss” to an important client, a crucial step in this shadow civil war, Isla suddenly finds herself out of her depth, co-opted as a rebel icon and targeted by armed government agents.

An orphan with a murky back story, Isla is apparently apolitical, asexual, and too focussed on her work to engage with deeper social issues. But close encounters with mysterious figures from her past lead her to shock revelations, including her connections to powerful government insiders, queer love stories, drugs, murder and more. As plans to stage a major religious celebration draw near, Isla’s kiss delivery business becomes part of a bold plot to disrupt the ceremony and expose the sham.

Also in this maximalist tangle of subplots are UFOs, abusive priests, a monstrously ugly child hidden from society, a divine musical symphony with brainwashing powers, and meta references to a film-within-a-film version of Kiss Wagon. At one point Murali includes an arch disclaimer, fleetingly glimpsed on a cinema wall: “all characters and events you see are real, any similarity to an actual film or its characters preserved or lost is purely intentional.”

How much of this densely woven allegory will engage a general audience, and how much will remain part of Murali’s impenetrable private mythology, is open to question. The director clearly set our to critique religious indoctrination, which will arguably have more bite in an Indian context than in more secular countries, but he also proudly champions style over substance, technique over narrative, so his intentions with Kiss Wagon appear to be more aesthetic than intellectual.

Whatever his motives, on a purely visual level, Kiss Wagon is exquisitely composed and endlessly compelling, bombarding viewers with fast-moving Pop Art montages of high-resolution images that blossom and dissolve in seconds: stormclouds, oceans, hammers, bubbles, fireworks, vintage film projectors, electronic brain scans, scrolling computer code and more, often overlaid with artfully grungy textures, glitchy video crackle, rewind and fast-forward effects. Sound design is also a rich part of the mix while an eclectic musical score, co-written by Ramachandran and Murali, covers a broad spectrum from heavy metal to jazz, orchestral pieces to pop ballads. Plenty of high quality ingredients even if the cumulative effect becomes overwhelming across three hours, draining and exhilarating in equal measure.

Director, producer, editing, sound design: Midhun Murali
Screenwriters, music: Midhun Murali, Greeshma Ramachandran
Cast: Greeshma Ramachandran, Jicky Paul, Midhun Murali
Producer: Murali Damodharan
Production company: DMP (India)
World sales: Krishnendu Kalesh Presents (India)
Venue: Rotterdam Film Festival (Tiger Competition)
In Malayalam, English
176 minutes

Is it a power move or a romantic one? Who knows. But as soon as he brings his lips to her ears and she hears his secret, she excuses herself. Something in their relationship has shifted. Not long after, he returns home to find her absent. Her clothes have fled the wardrobe. She has left him.

This is the extraordinary setup of the new Luchetti film showing at IFFR and based on a Domenico Starnone novel. The film brings Luchetti and the actor Elio Germano together once again. They have made a film that is both wonderful for how it pursues this central conceit and how it grows to encompass a life that is fictional but relatable. After IFFR, a large number of European festivals should pick it up. And although American remakes have a bad rep, Confidenza’s themes would surely work Stateside. (That the English translation of the Starnone novel was done by Jhumpa Lahiri should have some value in that market.)

We first meet Pietro Vella, the man at the centre of the pact of secrets, as a grandfather having visions of his own demise before we understand that he is on the verge of a prize to be conferred by the president of Italy. Emma, his daughter, is lobbying for her father to win but she’s informed that he’s not exactly eligible. For one, he’s no longer the most famous person with his last name; that’ll be his daughter. Also, the prize requires that a well-known student of his to stand up and speak well of him.

Well, his daughter knows how to fix these objections. One of her father’s high school students, Teresa Quadraro, has left Italy to become a well-regarded teacher at MIT. If she agrees to give the speech, the prize would definitely go to the older Vella. It seems simple enough. But is reaching out to a former student a good idea, given that children are doomed to grasp only a smidgen of their parent’s past life?

To answer that question, Luchetti intervenes, wrapping the past within the ongoing timeline, unspooling Pietro Vella’s past — his classroom career, his initial rise, his love life — as the prize’s final destination heads towards an uncertain future. Time passes by without the usual cinematic stamps. Between one scene and the other, days, weeks or years may have gone by. The dialogue is the only way of knowing what time we are in.  Perhaps Luchetti believes that everyone has read the Starnone novel, or maybe he just requires attentiveness.

Whatever the case, he has made a terrific drama out of Pietro Vella’s life. The screenplay, co-written by the director and Francesco Piccolo, is wise about romantic relationships, marriages, and the wrecking or haunting effects either can have on a career and a life. It is also a smart screenplay in how skillfully it brings together that pact of secrets between lovers to collide with the presidential prize lobby.

Holding both strands together is Germano, an actor who plays flirty, scared, and charming in persuasive ways. Somehow, his face finds a way to convey an underlying unease. Maybe Pietro should have adopted the substance of a line spoken by his wife later in the film. She’s asked for a secret that would ruin her but refuses to say. “I want to keep loving and being loved,” she replies. “Secrets have to stay secrets.” Those are words to live by for any adult.

Despite the film’s general excellence, there are two somewhat false notes. One comes at the end, where the film’s juxtaposing of reality and fantasy breaks down and the clarity of scenes from the past dissolves into ambiguity. Are we in a character’s head or are we not? The indecisiveness seems like an easy way out for a film that had offered so much lucidity prior.

The other issue concerns Federica Rosellini as Teresa. There is some makeup intended to make her age-appropriate, but otherwise it is the same actress playing the character across several decades, which probably made sense on paper because Rosellini is in her early thirties. It doesn’t quite play out that way onscreen because the age difference between Teresa and Pietro is important to the narrative. Somewhere around the second decade captured in the film, the character does catch up with the actress but in high school it’s a hard sell. Her character’s intellectual precocity cannot be a symptom of physical maturity.

This last note might be trivial but the first one is frustrating for how it equivocates — as though realism suddenly becomes too slim a vessel to encompass the film’s climactic event, where it has served quite well across more than 120 minutes. That weakness takes a few points off of Confidenza. But overall, Luchetti has made a remarkable picture from a great story. He gets bonus points for featuring an aptly zany score by Thom Yorke.

Director: Daniele Luchetti
Screenplay: Francesco Piccolo, Daniele Luchetti, based on a novel by Domenico Starnone
Cast: Elio Germano, Federica Rosellini, Vittoria Puccini, Pilar Fogliati, Isabella Ferrari
Producer: Fabrizio Donvito
Cinematography: Ivan Casalgrandi
Editor: Ael Dallier Vega
Music: Thom Yorke
Production Company: Indiana Production
World sales: Vision Distribution International
Venue: IFFR (Big Screen Competition)
In Italian
136 minutes

It’s a descriptor that young Bruce Koech (Kael Wafubwa) aspires to in Tevin Kimathi and Millan Tarus’ characterful film, which packs a powerful punch within its ostensibly lightweight concept. Bruce lives in a world where his native tongue – Kiswahili – is forbidden from being spoken at school. His refusal to comply sees him have repeated run-ins with various authority figures, all while being guided by an imaginary sensei who advises him on his path to kick-ass heroism.

The film opens with Bruce undergoing instruction from his unnamed mentor in a forest dojo where the young boy practices mimicking the war cry of his idol, Bruce Lee. Cinematographer Viboks Omndi captures this in popping and vibrant colour and Sean Peevers score reinforces the film’s confident tone. However, this is quickly dispelled when we realise Bruce’s time at school is a far more muted affair – the screen has already been significantly drained of colour by the time a classmate prefect pulls Bruce up and reports him for a “language policy violation” for speaking anything other than English on the premises.

What had originally seemed like fanciful daydreams are transformed into a coping mechanism – Bruce’s reps in the dojo become the training he needs to endure lashes in the headteacher’s office, his silent endurance its own form of rebellion. It transforms Stero into a surprisingly touching and affirming film about how childhood imagination can be harnessed for strength, while also touching on systems of cultural degradation and the will it takes to defy them.

Directors: Tevin Kimathi, Millan Tarus
Cast: Kael Wafubwa, Lucarelli Onyango
Producer: Juliana Kabua
Screenplay: Millan Tarus
Cinematography: Viboks Omondi
Editing: George Mugambi
Music, sound design: Sean Peevers
Production design: Claire Njoki
Production company: LBx Africa (Kenya)
Venue: International Film Festival Rotterdam (Tiger Shorts Competition)
In Kiswahili, English
13 minutes

Special Jury Award: Kiss Wagon
dir. by Midhun Murali
India

Special Jury Award: Flathead
dir. by Jaydon Martin
Australia

BIG SCREEN COMPETITION
The Old Bachelor
dir. by Oktay Baraheni
Iran

AMMODO TIGER SHORT COMPETITION
Crazy Lotus
dir. by Naween Noppakun
Thailand

Few Can See
dir. by Frank Sweeney
Ireland

Workers’ Wings
dir. by Ilir Hasanaj
Kosovo

COMPETING FOR THE EUROPEAN SHORT FILM AWARD
I Would Rather Be a Stone
dir. by Ana Husman
Croatia

FIPRESCI AWARD
Kiss Wagon
dir. by Midhun Murali
India

KNF AWARD (Dutch journalists)
Daphne was a torso ending in leaves
dir. by Catriona Gallagher
Italy, Greece

NETPAC AWARD
Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust
dir. by Ishan Shukla
India, France, Germany

YOUTH JURY AWARD
Levante/Power Alley
dir. by Lillah Halla
Brazil, France, Uruguay

Filled with natural poetry and a forceful sense of the lights and shadows that alternately gleam on and darken human affairs, the film nimbly compresses Milton Hatoum’s novel into archetypal scenes aimed at the emotional core. (It has points of resemblance to another Hatoum novel that was adapted by Sergio Machado in 2002, River of Desire.) Romantic and passionate, even in its realism about collective and personal tragedies, this exotic drama has more chances than most festival films to break out with wider audiences. It bowed in Rotterdam’s Big Screen Competition.

In his eighth film, Gomes returns to rural northern Brazil of the 1940s, the setting of his first film Cinema, Aspirin and Vultures, which became Brazil’s Oscar submission in 2005 and made him famous. Here again we find characters coming from an entirely different culture – in Portrait, they originate in Lebanon – struggling to adapt to the Amazon. Interestingly, it is not the awe-inspiring grandeur of nature or the wildness of the jungle, buzzy with insects and animals, that is the obstacle; it is the prospect of living in a much freer society where cultures and religions, Christians and Muslims, mingle and meld, and women have far greater autonomy.

World War II is just over and new wars are beginning in Lebanon, when the striking Emilie (Wafa’a Celine Halawi) and her possessive brother Emir (Zakaria Al Kaakour) decide to emigrate to Brazil. Actually it is Emir, a volatile personality not always in control of himself, who decides for both of them by selling the family house and busting Emilie out of the Catholic convent where she has been living. Al Kaakour and Halawi play the opening scenes like they were lovers, and it is not until clues are dropped about their parents having been killed by Muslim marauders that their true blood relationship is revealed. But a doubt has been planted about Emir’s loving, possibly incestuous looks at his sister, a doubt that only grows stronger as the film goes on.

Though she has been reluctantly dragged along on a sea voyage that will take them across the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and up the Amazon River, Emilie soon finds a plus to life on the ship: she is irresistibly drawn to a handsome stranger on board. Omar (Charbel Kamel) at first appears to be a small-time Muslim trader, and when he learns she is unattached, he returns her interest. He has not reckoned with Emir, who is rude and hostile from the start.

But as spectacular and eerie sunsets shot in high contrast black and white make way for the brilliance of bright mornings, so do Emilie and Omar’s feelings transform into heightened passion. They are making their way up the Amazon to the city of Manaus when a steamy tryst between the two finally triggers Emir’s pent-up jealousy. It explodes in a violent scene that marks not the end of the story, but a definite turning point.

Gomes maintains wonderful control through thick and thin, using an expressive hand-held camera to inflame the dramatic and erotic moments without really showing much detail, and carefully stepping back from melodrama every time death approaches. The three young Lebanese actors bring naturalness to their roles, even in scenes that could easily have felt overly contrived, like the young couple’s first meeting with Omar’s dignified uncle and aunt, and especially in the touching final scenes. Al Kaakour is the most multi-faceted, revealing a pathetic depth behind Emir’s obstinate prejudice against his sister’s Muslim suitor that is repugnant and sad.

The message of religious and cultural tolerance beams – not always very subtly — through the supporting cast. Rosa Peixoto shines as a woman of the Amazon who befriends Emilie and takes her to an indigenous village threatened by white land-grabbers. Italian actor Eros Galbiati is charming and very p.c. as a gay photographer who is full of wisdom and compassion. His photos capture the poor and humble immigrants on their way to an unknown future, either determined like Emilie to shrug off the traumas of the war and move on, or caught in the web of their past beliefs like Emir.

Gomes’ regular DP Pierre de Kerchove uses black and white cinematography with mastery to create an original setting that can feel like some retro sci-fi film at times. A subtle music score credited to Mateus Alves, Piero Bianchi and Sami Bordokan ranges widely from stringed Arabic instruments to native Brazilian folk dances, subtly integrating the characters on a musical level, while they casually alternate dialogue in Arabic, French, Portuguese and Italian.

Director: Marcelo Gomes
Screenwriters: Marcelo Gomes, Maria Camargo, Gustavo Campos, based on a novel by Milton Hatoum
Cast: Wafa’a Celine Halawi, Charbel Kamel, Zakaria Al Kaakour, Eros Galbiati, Rosa Peixoto
Producers: Guilherme Coelho, Mariana Ferraz, Ernesto Soto Canny
Cinematography: Pierre de Kerchove
Editing: Karen Harley
Production design:  Marcos Pedroso, Caterina Pepe
Costume design:  Ro Nascimento, Maria Diaz, Fabio Cicolani
Music:  Mateus Alves, Piero Bianchi, Sami Bordokan
Production companies: Matizar Filmes (Brazil) in association with Orjouane Productions (Lebanon),  Bubble Projects (Brazil),  VideoFilmes (Brazil)
Coproduced by Kavac Film (Italy), Gullane (Brazil), Misti Filmes (Brazil), Muiraquita Filmes (Brazil), Globo Filmes (Brazil), Canal Brasil
World sales:  Matizar Filmes
Venue:  Rotterdam Intl. Film Festival (Big Screen Competition)
In  Arabic, French, Portuguese, Italian
92 minutes

A 19-minute documentary from Ilir Hasanaj, it presents brief portraits of Fatmiri, Liridoni, and Milazimi – as well as their stories – as a way of bringing attention to people so easily forgotten by society and history. An act of witnessing via patient observation and unobtrusive questioning, Hasanaj’s film is tactile and intimate, managing to evoke the physical nature of its subjects’ lives while never distracting from the factual reality of their situation. The film was one of three winners of the Tiger Shorts competition at this year’s International Rotterdam Film Festival.

“The dream is, obviously, to prosper,” says one of the men, before making an analogy that gives the film its title. He likens the manual labourer struggling to succeed financially to a bird attempting to fly with its wings clipped; it’s impossible to stop trying, but equally as impossible to succeed. However, the result is not an exercise in eliciting pity. Hasanaj’s intention is far more to offer the three men dignity to articulate their stories and experiences, in a world that has precious little time or interest in hearing them.

The film is divided into different sections, with its interviews combined with both footage of the men undertaking gentle physical activities – chopping wood, riding a bicycle – and sequences that immerse the viewer into the process of manufacture. They act as rhythmic interludes that are both contrasting and complementary, reminding the viewer of the vast encompassing industry that cares little for the personal stories that Hasanaj is keen to highlight.

Director, screenplay: Ilir Hasanaj
Cast: Fatmiri, Liridoni, Milazimi
Producers: Arvan Berisha, Ilir Hasanaj
Cinematography, music: Vigan Nimani
Editing, sound design: Enis Saraci
Production company: Unseen Films (Kosovo)
Venue: International Film Festival Rotterdam (Tiger Shorts Competition)
In Albanian
19 minutes

The absence of noisy spectacle and aggressive theatrics is rare for a film about war, and opens the way for a tone that is both droll and reflective, as questions of purpose, belonging and allegiance come into sharp focus for those now scrabbling to subsist in a place deemed neither here nor there. Based on the critically praised 2018 novel of the same name by Andriy Kurkov, and distilled into a more sedentary, ruminative tale from the book’s rollicking odyssey, the film screens in the Tiger Competition at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Its understatement may limit broad appeal, but its sage charm and tender heart should easily find its audience, and ample festival slots.

Serhii (Viktor Zdanov) is the only beekeeper left in his village. In fact, now that the war is escalating, he is the only person left there at all, apart from Pashka (Volodymyr Yamnenko), a frenemy from his schooldays. The two share a bickering and begrudging camaraderie, for lack of other people around, when minor emergencies such as blown out windows crop up, or when someone is needed to share the miraculous treasure of a bottle of vodka that has been dug up in a backyard. They are men of few words, but established actors Zdanov and Yamnenko are adept at conveying a lot through a mere look or a gesture. There is no electricity in Serhii’s house to power lights, let alone television with its partisan news bulletins. As he bakes with dough from the scant food stocks, or sits by the wood-burner in evenings lit just by candles, his days pass slowly and uneventfully, in solitude with few remnants of community. But the quiet is preferable to unexpected company in this place of lawless opportunism and low-humming, constant threat, where the sound of a car on the road or a knock at the door is enough to set him instantly on edge. Explosions and blasts of gunfire from not so far away break through the silence. And when a corpse appears one day, shot by a sniper and visible in the distance through the kitchen window, Serhii must decide if it is worth the risk to venture over under cover of night to bury it.

Serhii has stayed in the village out of duty, to care for his bees. But he also feels, despite the precarious insecurity of daily life, that there is nowhere else that he belongs. In conversations with a Ukrainian soldier who stops by, he describes a gnawing sense of neglect that the Donbass was largely forgotten and war left to simmer by power players in Kyiv, when it was not being used as a bargaining chip, or its blue-collar workers looked down upon as backward. In this, he feels more affinity with Pashka, who worked in the mines since childhood and feels little agency over his fate, than the incoming troops from the capital, despite Pashka’s separatist affiliations. Serhii tries to keep his head down, and live a simple, apolitical existence (soldiers are referred to just as “them,” regardless of stripe) that has no involvement in the surrounding fighting. But he begins to realise that nothing is neutral, and that being part of the world, as darkness closes in, compels him to take a stance. D.O.P Vadym Ilkov captures the sparse beauty of the cold, snow-covered landscape, creating a sense of place that beguiles even as it lies emptied out, boobytrapped and unforgiving — a home that is singularly home, no matter how close the advancing threat of occupation hangs over it.

Director: Dmytro Moiseiev
Screenwriter: Andriy Kurkov
Cast: Viktor Zdanov, Volodymyr Yamnenk
Producer: Ivanna Diadiura
Cinematographer: Vadym Ilkov
Editor: Oleksii Shamin
Production design: Vladlen Odududenko
Sound design: Artem Mostovyi
Music: Andrii Ponomarov
Production company: Idas International Film LLC (Ukraine)
Sales: Idas International Film LLC (Ukraine)
Festival: Rotterdam (Tiger Competition)
In Ukrainian
100 minutes

When Vanja Kaludjercic spoke to TFV about the program on the eve of the festival, she expressed her hope that the Rotterdam experience might persuade the director to reconsider his stance. “The LGBTQ+ community needs voices like his,” she told us. Scud smiles upon hearing this during our interview. He concedes he did enjoy the ambience at the premiere (“I’ve never had a bad premiere, and this one was a lot of fun”) and hints at a “never say never” attitude before adding, “But there will probably not be another Scud film.”

If he sticks to this, then Naked Nations is quite the farewell. Shot when COVID restrictions were loosening in Hong Kong (as acknowledged in the credits), the film is cheerfully brazen in its provocation, with multiple lengthy scenes, starting from the first, of men running around in the nude with a face mask as their only item of clothing. Unsurprisingly, this was a bit too much even by guerilla filmmaking standards: “I can’t go back to Hong Kong, there’s a warrant for my arrest,” Scud says with a chuckle.

Assuming the “ten and done” principle is upheld, does he think he got everything out of his system as a director? Is there nothing left to say? “I believe I said everything I wanted to say. There is only one regret. I had written a script, called Naked Nation, which was a chronicle of Chinese history based on stories I heard from my family. Producers even said I would get distribution in China, which was a new thing for me.” So what happened? “President Xi got elected.”

Of course, with China’s notorious censorship issues (“Someone acquired the rights to my films for a platform, and I’m not sure how much they had to cut”), the idea that they would even entertain the notion of releasing a film called Naked Nations is amusing. “And now it couldn’t even be released in Hong Kong,” says Scud, who is planning to relocate his studio to a safer place, like Taiwan.

Part of the aim of the Focus section is to increase international awareness of the people and countries it pays tribute to. “I’m honored,” the director says. “I couldn’t believe Vanja mentioned me and my work so much in her opening remarks, because I admire her a lot. And I’m happy to be discovered by a new audience.”

That said, he fully embraces his status as a filmmaker with a very niche following. “I don’t have a choice,” he says with a laugh. “Early on, I was not very comfortable with that. The other day, I re-watched my very first movie, City Without Baseball. I still can’t believe it didn’t attract a wider audience, but maybe there is something about my work that makes them turn away. Now I’m indifferent to it. What am I supposed to do, catch up with the mainstream? I won’t do that.” He adds a pertinent detail about the release of his first movie, back in 2008: “It screened for exactly 21 days, and there’s one fan who went to see it on 19 of them.”

So, what’s next? “I’m relocating my studio because I don’t want my work to endanger other people. I have been thinking about maybe going back and facing sentencing because I don’t think they would be too harsh. The new film is going to travel for about a year, and I’m also re-editing two of my previous films, with new titles, as an experiment.” If they’re different enough, wouldn’t that make them movies no. 11 and 12? He reacts with a knowing grin: “Maybe.”

Robin’s (Sidney Flanigan) ominous words open Phoebe Nir’s feature debut Eco Village, premiering at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Presented as a “film, musical, vanity project,” it’s the latter descriptor that applies most directly to this loose-limbed indie whose hodgepodge concoction of coming-of-age story, summery eroticism, and midnight movie mania never feels fully formed.

Tired of living in a cheap motel, Robin, an aspiring songwriter, packs her ukulele and teddy bear named Donuts and hitches her way to a small, bucolic commune in upstate New York she saw online. From the moment she arrives, there’s a palpable tension in the air. Sammi (Devika Bhisa) is openly hostile, while her life partner and founder, Ursula (Lindsay Burdge) maintains an enigmatic distance, but an undeniable influence. The laid-back Jean Lerois (Eric Austin) keeps his own counsel but warns Robin to stay away from the hunky Jake (Alex Breaux), and naturally, that’s where her trouble begins. Jake never pretends to be anything but a boozy, self-involved island unto himself, but Robin can’t help but be drawn to him. Even though he initially resists her sexual advances, she is determined to have someone to hold and be horny with, and her pursuit sets off an explosive emotional frenzy across the small farming community that was pent up and waiting to happen.

Marked by a tendency to add three more ingredients when one or two will suffice, Eco Village never gets out of its own way long enough to let its core story about Robin’s idealistic view of love blinding her from seeing Jake’s true nature take root. Based on her own off-Broadway play, Nir attempts to augment the material for the screen with her own forgettable, open mic night-styled songs and music, largely via montage heavy interludes. The editing by Linds Gray of Sean Dahlberg’s warm 16mm cinematography emphasizes lens flares and reel ends in cutting from scene to scene. The picture simply struggles to sit still with Robin’s feelings, frequently moving away from them as quickly as they’re formed.

This restlessness comes into full bloom in the film’s big swing, third act shift. A long simmering confrontation between Robin and Sammi finally boils over and the picture jumps into an extended, unexpectedly bloody, orgiastic “musical” sequence. Without spoiling anything further, the filmmakers even manage for a helicopter to appear in an otherwise low-budget production. Whether what unfolds is real, metaphorical, or a product of Robin’s imagination hardly matters. However, the subsequent reveal outlining Robin’s true backstory in a surprise twist is the picture once again squirming out of our grasp. And the suggestion that it makes about the reasons and context for her emotional naiveté feels too easy, and too reductive.

Both the most exciting and scariest part of falling in love for the first time is opening yourself up to someone and letting them see who you really are. And it’s this very vulnerability that’s missing from Eco Village. As confidently as Nir puts her own words, music, and even life on screen — the film is inspired by her own fumbling first experiences — there’s also an eagerness to make an impression that overreaches to the point that it forgets the cardinal rule: be yourself. 

Director, screenwriter, music: Phoebe Nir
Cast: Sidney Flanigan, Alex Braeux, Lindsay Burdge, Stephen Gurewitz, Devika Bhisa, Eric Austin
Producers: Phoebe Nir, Theresa Rebeck, Giovanni Labadessa, Luca Severi
Cinematography: Sean Dahlberg
Editing: Linds Gray
Sound: Enrico Zavatta
Production companies: Luca Severi Production Group (United States)
World sales: Luca Severi Production Group
Venue: International Film Festival Rotterdam (Bright Future)
In English
82 minutes

The timeframe in question is the period during which NATO carried out a campaign of aerial bombing against the former Yugoslavia during the Kosovan War. It was a campaign that saw the deaths of several hundred civilians between 24 March and 10 June 1999. Those dates provide the entrance and exit points for Gasic’s unusual and deftly woven drama that is stitched together from snatches of fictional home video footage captured by a family who are both enduring the bombardment and trying to continue with their lives.

This is especially true of the film’s main characters – a trio of sisters: 17-year-old Sonja (Milica Gicic), 15-year-old Dragana (Tamara Gajovic), and 7-year-old Tijana (Viktorija Vasiljevic) known affectionately as Tica. It is these three who, alternating between them, are the in-film cinematographers of the action, from the opening scenes in which their father is conscripted, right through the duration of the campaign. More than being about surviving the frequent air raids, the narrative is a familiar tapestry of sororal squabbles, family milestones, and the first flushes of romance – all set against the pervasive risk that a siren will punctuate an otherwise routine interaction with the terrifying threat of bombs falling nearby.

The use of the home video mode that Gasic employs is an interesting decision that allows her to probe at sisterly dynamics and the unseen effects of the situation without having to consistently resort to overtly dramatic escalation. Instead, the film almost has the vibe of one set across a long hot summer, full of longueurs and fleeting glances, with tensions ebbing and flowing naturalistically and instances of direct conflict feeling as explosive as the sudden threat of a raid. For the three girls, the threat of the bombing campaign feels less immediate than it does for their terrified mother. They are more annoyed that their time hanging out with the cute boy who arrived next door, Mladen (Pavle Cemerikic), has been curtailed after his family, including his young sister Lela (Masa Cirovic), retreated from Belgrade to the relative safety of the countryside.

And so, the girls film themselves stealing fruit from a nearby neighbour’s cherry tree, a dance performance by Tica and Lela, or the local group of youths sitting around drinking beers in the evening. Sometimes they will just sit around drawing and reading, or gently needling one another as siblings do. While some of the raids are more dramatic in their presentation, Gasic eschews the conventions of horror genre found footage films and, typically, the camera is switched off when the sirens blare. Given that the footage is supposed to be filmed in-world, all the exchanges involve the innate awkwardness of people knowing they’re on camera, so the actors perform on two different levels. While this means that private moments are not recorded, instead we must fill in the blanks ourselves.

This is perhaps most interestingly possible by the fact that we are typically made aware of who is supposed to be holding the camera, so we can intuit their inner thoughts from what they have decided to point the lens at. In one sequence, Dragana is flirting with Mladen, and the steadfast attention of the camera held by Sonja conveys to us exactly how she feels about this possible development. Later, Tica picks up the camera and records Dragana quietly glowering in the corner while Mladen and Sonja dance with one another – until she realises that she’s being filmed. There are moments in which emotion comes forcefully to the surface, and the tension proves too much, but these are only occasional and instead such things must be discovered between the lines.

All of these nuances depend on strong performances and all three girls are excellent in this capacity. Both Gicic and Gajevic are fantastic in their unspoken rivalry for Mladen’s affection, showing a wonderful capacity for momentary lapses that allow their true feelings to shine through before the mask is reapplied. Despite the two of them being the primary camera-wielders and participants in what initially feels like the central narrative thrust, it is Vasiljevic as Tica who steals the show.

From the naturalism of her despondent opening scene in which Sonja cajoles out of her that she’s glum because her school friend told her she was ugly, through to how she emotionally responds to the older girls’ turmoil and – in particular – a final act plot development, she’s magnificent. In a film that is ultimately about sisterly love and relationships, it is in her personal story of growing up far too fast that 78 Days packs its most poignant punches.

Director, screenplay: Emilija Gasic
Cast: Viktorija Vasiljevic, Milica Gicic, Tamara Gajevic, Pavle Cemerikic, Masa Cirovic, Jelena Djokic, Goran Bogdan
Producers: Andrijana Sofranic Sucur, Milos Ivanovic
Cinematography: Ines Gowland
Editing: Jovana Filipovic
Sound: Dora Filipovic
Production design: Maja Duricic
Production company: Set Sail Films (Serbia)
Venue: International Film Festival Rotterdam (Bright Future)
In Serbian
82 minutes

Steppenwolf is also one of Yerzhanov’s darkest works to date, dialling down his signature tragicomic absurdist humour and significantly upping the body count. World premiering in Rotterdam this week, this wild ride from the Wild East is low on character nuance or narrative logic, but it should have broad crossover potential from art-house audiences to open-minded genre fans. The director’s strong track record in Cannes, Venice, San Sebastian and elsewhere should also open doors to further festival screenings after IFFR.

As with all his work, Yerzhanov sprinkles Steppenwolf with references to canonical literature and cinema. He borrows the title from Swiss-German author Herman Hesse’s 1927 novel about a man in the depths of an existential crisis, which he also quotes over the opening credits. But John Ford and Howard Hawks are more obvious influences here. The director describes his latest film as “The Searchers with a psychopath at the centre of the plot,” and even includes direct visual homages to Ford’s 1956 frontier classic. There are stylistic echoes of Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah here too, in the unflinching depiction of a purgatorial cosmos dominated by machismo, venality and violence.

Steppenwolf opens with an arresting image of blood-smeared riot shields, the aftermath of a battle between police and protestors. The rioters are then dragged to a remote police outpost and tortured into signing fake confessions. These scenes allude heavily to “Bloody January”, a series of violent street protest against spiralling prices, poverty and government corruption that swept Kazakhstan in 2022, leading to a brutal crackdown backed by Russian troops. The regime used lethal force and “shoot to kill” orders against the uprising, which left 227 people dead and saw thousands arrested. Predictably, Vladimir Putin sided with the Kazakh authorities, dismissing the protest as an attempted coup backed by foreign enemies.

But Yerzhanov is clearly not making a straight historical or political drama with Steppenwolf, merely building on recent events in his homeland to fashion a more allegorical, stylised, quasi-mythical backdrop. The setting here more closely resembles some kind of deeply entrenched civil war in a depopulated hellscape where rule of law has broken down, reminiscent of the Old West but also of post-apocalyptic thrillers like the Mad Max series.

Driving the narrative are two mismatched characters with overlapping motives. Braiyuk (an appealingly gruff Berik Aitzhanov) is a deeply cynical detective and trigger-happy killing machine, who seems entirely devoid of empathy or moral limitations. An anti-hero with heavy emphasis on the anti, Braiyuk has no qualms about torturing or murdering anyone in his path, often cracking tasteless jokes between bloodbaths. After cheating death during an assault on his police compound, Braiyuk spots an opportunity in the form of Tamara (Anna Starchenko), a mentally fragile young mother whose son has been kidnapped by widely feared local crime boss Taha, apparently with nefarious intentions.

While Tamara seeks only to deliver the boy from evil, Braiyuk has less noble motives, consumed by a long-standing revenge mission against Taha which only comes into focus midway through the film. Though this deranged cop is brazenly using her, the religiously devout Tamara still insists he is a good man deep down. He scoffs as her naive sentimentality, arguing that goodness is not “necessary” in a godless world where brute force is the only law. Even so, a kind of karmic reckoning arrives during the final spectacular showdown with Taha and his henchmen. Good does not quite triumph over evil, but tiny flickers of human kindness still survive in the nihilistic gloom.

Steppenwolf will not satisfy all tastes. Sadistic scenes of violence using hammers, fan blades, car jacks and more eventually become numbing. Braiyuk’s intermittent abuse of Tamara is uncomfortable too, and arguably superfluous to the plot. The broadly sketched main protagonists are two-dimensional at best, while secondary characters can barely muster one. All the same, taken on its own terms as an elevated neo-western noir thriller with undercurrents of social critique and savagely dark humour, this is a grimly compelling and stylish new peak from one of Kazakhstan’s most consistently interesting film-makers.

Director, screenwriter: Adilkhan Yerzhanov
Cast: Berik Aitzhanov, Anna Starchenko, Azamat Nigmanov, Yerkin Gubashev, Nurbek Mukushev
Cinematography: Yerkinbek Ptyraliyev
Editing: Arif Tleuzhanov, Adilkhan Yerzhanov
Production designer: Yermek Utegenov
Music: Galymzhan Moldanazar
Producers: Aliya Mendygozhina, Alexander Rodnyansky, Olga Khlasheva, Nurym Aydingali, Maxim Akbarov
Production company: Golden Man Media (Kazakhstan)
World sales: Blue Finch Films (UK)
Venue: Rotterdam Film Festival (Big Screen Competition)
In Kazakh, Russian
102 minutes

Taking the classical source material as inspiration, Catriona Gallagher has created an almost wordless essay film that acts as an ode to Daphne both in her original form as a nymph and her subsequent life as the laurel tree. Shot on grainy 16mm that was developed in a solution containing bay leaves, Gallagher’s film takes a particularly embodied story and crafts a haptic cinematic experience that communes with it.

In the original tale of Daphne and Apollo, the latter – the Olympian God of archery, poetry, prophesy, and more – became infatuated with the nymph, Daphne, after being struck by Eros’ arrow. A virginal follower of Artemis, Daphne was determined to reject his advances and fled. Alas, Apollo chased and, when eventually beginning to tire, Daphne beseeched her father to use his magic to destroy her beauty. She was immediately transformed into a laurel tree.

Laurel makes up the subject on which Gallagher’s camera is most often trained – whether that be direct images of shrubbery and foliage, motifs in art and architecture, the wearing of wreaths, or even the use of bay leaves (Laurus nobilis) to cultivate the celluloid on which the film was captured. Interspersed with these images are glimpses of the myth itself, recorded on amphora and architectural friezes and Bernini’s famous sculpture. All the while, they are accompanied by a text that recounts the myth but interrogates the ways in which Daphne’s story and her dendriform body have been claimed and co-opted.

Daphne’s act of refusal was in some ways undone: “Daphne was seen to consent… Daphne became symbol anyway… Daphne was made grotesque.” Aided by Alyssa Moxley’s crackling, scratching, breathy soundtrack Gallagher’s images feel like an invocation of reclamation, which Daphne’s leaves have helped to conjure and through which her roots are reaching out.

Director, producer, cinematography, editing: Catriona Gallagher
Music, sound design: Alyssa Moxley
Sales: Catriona Gallagher
Venue: International Film Festival Rotterdam (Tiger Short Competition)
No dialogue (text in English)
13 minutes

Born and based in Rome, Marco and Antonio Manetti first gained major exposure, in theaters and on the festival circuit, with their 2006 thriller Piano 17. “It cost €70,000, not even enough for a short film,” Marco tells us over the phone – a (literally) cheap endeavor, that nonetheless oozed creativity and skill. In 2011, the brothers took their sci-fi thriller The Arrival of Wang to Venice, where they returned in 2017, this time in the main competition, with the gangster musical Ammore e malavita.

It was the latter film that partly influenced Vanja Kaludjercic’s decision to devote one of this year’s Focus programs to the duo. “I first became aware of their work with Song’e Napule,” she says, referring to the 2013 comedy about a cop with musical aspirations going undercover as part of a wedding band to catch an elusive criminal. “I liked it a lot, and a few years later, with Ammore e malavita (Love and Bullets) it was love at first sight.”

Marco Manetti is pleased to hear this, as the brothers used to worry Song’e Napule might be “too Italian” for an international crowd. “The two films are very different, one [Ammore e malavita] is a musical and the other is about a musician, but yes, there is that connective tissue,” he explains. “And it’s true that a lot of people associate Italy with Naples in terms of music; I’ve had people burst into Neapolitan song when I’m abroad and mention I’m from Italy. So that’s a creative ember whose sparks are still very much with us.”

Music is an important part of their work, which is why we reached out to their regular composers, Pivio Pischiutta and Aldo De Scalzi. Says Pischiutta: “We’ve been working with the Manetti Bros. since 2003, when we scored the pilot episode of Coliandro, first broadcast in 2005. Since then, we’ve done the music for all their work, thanks to a wonderful chemistry that continually renews itself, as we’re encouraged to try something new each time, from funk to symphonic music, from country to metal, not to mention our take on the Neapolitan tradition. And we have plenty of surprises in store for their next movie.”

Coliandro, a TV series based on crime writer Carlo Lucarelli’s character of the same name, is also part of the IFFR tribute. “It made sense to us,” said Marco Manetti, “because those aren’t really TV episodes, they’re feature-length and we treat them like distinct movies. So when they told us what they were planning to show, we submitted a list of Coliandro films to choose from to complete the program, and they picked their favorite.”

The series is also an integral part of what one could call the “Manetti-verse”, seeing that the bumbling police inspector is played by one of their regular actors, Giampaolo Morelli. He’s part of a veritable cinematic family of cast and crew combined, which includes thespians like Valerio Mastandrea (most recently seen in the Diabolik trilogy as Inspector Ginko), Claudia Gerini and character actor Guglielmo Favilla, who has played supporting roles in the brothers’ films as well as their TV output (Coliandro and Rex).

Favilla sent us this description of the interpersonal dynamic on a Manetti Bros. set: “Their approach has stayed the same over the years, and they retain a certain indie sensibility even when the budget is huge, as with the Diabolik films. We’re all a very tight-knit group, all in it together to make something great. They’re very collaborative: Marco is the one who usually talks to the actors in the early stages, and if you ask him what he wants, he’ll say, ‘I don’t know.” Only after he’s seen our take on the material will he come up with suggestions.”

Favilla appears in the first Diabolik, which is screening in Rotterdam alongside its two follow-ups (the third film is making its international premiere at the festival). Marco Manetti is quite curious about non-Italians’ reaction to the trilogy. “Seeing them close together, they might notice the connective tissue across the trilogy, which we didn’t discuss as much in the Italian press because the films were released on a yearly basis.”

And then there’s the vintage elephant in the room. “In Italy, all the questions we got asked were about the original comic book. Whereas abroad, where Mario Bava’s film from the 1960s has a sizable cult following, people usually think we did a remake of that movie. We didn’t. Ours is an adaptation of the comic, while Bava’s version is more like a Bond film.”

Using entwined notions of person and political history as a jumping-off point, this smart Cambodian horror creates a world in which time has not only failed to heal wounds but through which the spectres of those who have been wronged exact something like revenge on the living. The original Khmer title translates as The Heir to the Building, which gives some sense of the generational haunting at play, in a film that is less interesting in unravelling a mystery as it is in spinning a terrifying web.

Soriya (Thanet Thorn) is a manga artist who lives and works in Japan with her photographer boyfriend, Diachi (Hosoda Yoshihiko). After the death of Soriya’s mother, the pair find an old photograph with an inscription suggesting Soriya has relatives living in Phnom Penh, despite her mother having maintained that none of their family had survived the genocide of the Khmer Rouge period (1975-9). When they learn the apartment building in the photograph – the Metta building – still stands, they decide to travel to Cambodia – both to search for creative inspiration in Soriya’s ancestral home and to see if she still has relations in the area.

Through the aid of a helpful agent who lives in Metta, they manage to not only secure an apartment in the now somewhat derelict complex but also to be reunited with Soriya’s aunt, Mao (Socheata Sveng) who is thrilled to finally meet her niece and insists on taking care of them during their stay. All is not as it initially seems in Metta, however, and what begins as Soriya having unnerving dreams eventually gives way to a cult encompassing the residents of the housing block and a mysterious ritual as part of which they seem to have identified Soriya as the next vessel for some interminable, dark spirit.

For the audience, the writing is on the wall from early on, with the trope of an apparently unrelated pre-titles sequence introducing them to the idea of whispering and malevolent spirits inhabiting the building. Equally familiar is the pained expression of warning that crosses the face of the taxi driver when he realises that he is taking Soriya and Daichi to stay in Metta. He attempts to ask them if they’ve heard the rumours of strange goings on there but is abruptly cut off by the agent who manages to make his brief cameo sing with the grinning malevolence of the young men in Michael Haneke’s Funny Games. As he leads the young couple along the semi-ruined balconies of the tenement, the camera swings around to reveal the other residents all staring from outside their apartments in unsettling silence.

These elements serve the filmmakers incredibly well in allowing them to craft a palpable sense of unease without going too hard and fast into the typical beats of an out-an-out horror film. What is perhaps most interesting about this is that while the overt peril and panic absolutely ramp up during the film’s second half, they do so in a very matter-of-fact way that is less about a classic cycle of rising tension and release, and more about the gradual and unwavering ratcheting of the anxiety. A blow-by-blow account of what happens might suggest the film lurches very suddenly from slow-building dread to crazed horror, but Neth and Chea are interested in a very different type of sensation and it is one that heightens the impact.

This is perhaps partly a result of a fantastic setting for the film, the rundown apartment complex that ranges from shabby but inhabited apartments to crumbling corridors and ominous locked cupboards used for cruel punishments. It is a location through which ghosts seem destined to wander whether it was being used in a horror film or not. However, the directors – who also wrote the screenplay – were clearly keen to avoid leaning too heavily into specifics of Khmer Rouge history or even that of Soriya’s family. Instead, there are glimpses – supernatural and otherwise – that hint at things and have an eerie accumulating effect. For some, this might feel a bit woolly there are moments in which the lack of clarifying disclosure might be frustrating, but in fact, the ambiguity works utterly in the film’s favour. Instead of being beholden to factual revelations, instead, the film submits to the overwhelming horror of its atmosphere. Here a dark past has seeped into the bones of the structure and the souls of the people, and while a reckoning may be necessary, there is no guarantee that it offers catharsis.

Directors, screenplay: Inrasothythep Neth, Sokyou Chea
Cast: Thanet Thorn, Hosoda Yoshihiko, Socheata Sveng, Mony Rous, Maiguma Katsuya
Producer, editing: Loy Te
Cinematography: Jeremiah Overman
Music: Jean-Charles Bastion
Sound design: Vincent Villa
Production design: Jean-Sien Kin
Production company: Kongchak Pictures Ltd. (Cambodia)
Venue: International Film Festival Rotterdam (Big Screen Competition)
In Khmer, Japanese, English
88 minutes

It plays out in a gauzy and bleached-out, dying realm of depleted resources and the litter of analogue technology, where just a few solitary survivors and collectors pass desperate and shell-shocked days, with slim vestiges of magical knowledge to draw upon. They dream of evolving into forms that can survive an increasingly poisonous habitat, but risk becoming the grist for strange sorcery and transmutations. Mostly wordless, the film will more easily hook those with a taste for experimentation and shimmering atmosphere over straightforward plot propulsion, but few could be left unswayed by the beauty of the craft on display and the utterly distinctive look of this stop-motion animation and live-action blend, which is punctuated by black-and-white footage of spewing lava, landslides and other natural disasters, as it evokes a land and bodies in cataclysmic flux.

Atallah was previously awarded at Rotterdam for his second feature Rey (2017), a comparably hallucinogenic dreamscape on the border of history and myth that also sprang from a fascination with cinema’s materials and the transformations wrought by time (it incorporated buried and exhumed film stock), which reinterpreted the Mapuche legend of a nineteenth-century French adventurer who founded his own kingdom. Atallah’s short films are also highly regarded on the festival circuit, and his recent Vitanuova (2023) similarly explored extinction and hyper-mechanisation. Animalia Paradoxa feeds into a wider body of work that is endlessly inventive and deeply uneasy about the pressing issues of these dark times, be they imperialistic rule or a pillaged Earth and species collapse.

Mass extinction has quietly crept up on an unnamed land in proximity to the sea, where fragmentary voices played back on old reel-to-reel machines are the only link to memories of the beauty and lush plant life of the deeps. Animalia, a rangy and rag-clothed creature so dust-encrusted she merges with her surroundings, moves through the dilapidated environs in a gas mask to guard against the noxious air. She fills and hauls plastic bottles, and drops broken trinkets and toys into a hand with long, green fingernails that emerges ritualistically each day from a hole in the wall, the face of its owner unseen. Her skin glittering and almost translucent, she curls up in a daily bath to partake in some sort of strange emulsion process, in impossibly gradual pursuit of her aquatic aspirations which provide the only shimmer of hope for future continuity in a more watery state.

In this post-apocalyptic, wind-blown wasteland of building husks, exposed pipelines and the detritus of film stock left to its obsolescence, scarce moments of communion with others come mainly as barter for survival, with a currency of scraps, trash and arcane information about possible escapes. Among the other lone, semi-human inhabitants are a wraithlike woman suspended by her long hair like a slumbering bat, figures in animal masks that peer with trepidation from the upper windows of buildings, and an agitator with a loudspeaker who shouts prophesies of storms, serpents and plagues as her followers drag a body in chains.

Desire and compassion still flicker sporadically, but not all in this crumbling realm are to be trusted. A trick by a covetous dissembler, preying on Animalia’s desperate yearning to reach the sea and the more amphibious possibilities for existence it enables, transports us into a miniature, red-draped theatre overseen by a behatted puppet tyrant with violent designs. The fluid segues between actors made unreal, in a half-way state of transmutation in a world that can no longer support their survival, to a domain of creaking, breakable marionettes, embodying the very real alienation and pain of current political realities, make Animalia Paradoxa a stunning, haunting work of the imagination, and a melancholic song for a declining planet.

Director, screenwriter: Niles Atallah
Cast: Andrea Gomez
Producer: Catalina Vergara
Cinematographer: Matias Illanes
Editor: Mayra Moran
Production design: Natalia Geisse
Sound design: Claudio Vargas
Production company: Globo Rojo Films
Sales: Compañía de Cine
Festival: Rotterdam (Harbour)
In Spanish
80 minutes

Screening in the Tiger Competition at the Rotterdam International Film Festival, Iranian director Farshad Hashemi’s feature debut is an inventive and droll reflection on the tension between memory and moving forward, and the fragility of our physical moorings to present time and space. It should enjoy further festival spots as a timely exploration of Iranian society in breakdown, with a quiet, rich humanity and poetic lightness of handwriting that signals a promising directorial voice.

On one of the walls hangs Mahboube’s most prized artwork, an unfinished portrait of herself and her sister as children. The place where her mouth should be on the canvas is a blank, as her father didn’t have time to paint in all her features before he died. In another spot of the house, termites have eaten right through the door frame. This house, in which the entire film plays out, is marked by incomplete plans and disintegration, in which time and loss have worked an aggressive war of attrition. The exact circumstances around Mahboube’s seclusion remain vague in this enigmatic, ingeniously multi-layered film, despite her voiceover ruminations. But we gather that the ghosts are ones of emigration and exile, in a Tehran in which hardship undermines everybody’s peace of mind.

We are shifted seamlessly and playfully between the film-within-the-film, about a marriage collapse and a home that is being packed up, and its behind-the-scenes production, in scenes both moving and amusing, which foreground the constructed nature of our memoryscapes. Mahboube is played with a brooding intensity and flickers of long-dormant vitality by Mahboubeh Gholami. A sculptor who has carefully packed her most fragile pieces away but must keep living in the house during the shoot, she is at first watchful and on edge, irritated by the crew’s lack of care in regard to her personal belongings as they take over, rearrange and repaint the space. She complains when the front door is left open despite instructions, a rare book edition becomes mug-stained, and a kitten is trapped in the retractable arm of some equipment. The director, Farshad (played by the actual director, with that teasing, self-referential merging of fiction and reality Iranian cinema is adept at) is for his part understanding, but a tad impatient with this scrutiny. There is bedlam to oversee in the cramped space, after all, and he promises to reimburse her for any damage.

Mahboube’s discomfort is not just about money though. She experiences the incursion into her space as a form of erasure, as this is a house loaded with her own history. As the days go on, the relationships between her and the crew tentatively thaw. Having lost faith in people, a communal urge stirs in her again, in the midst of the crew’s joking warmth. A Kurdish crew member who stays over to keep an eye on the expensive equipment even helps her bury her cancer-ridden dog, who had grown old with her in the home.

Amid the disorienting illusions manufactured during the shoot, and a snow machine that even pumps out a different season, Mahboube experiences a kind of catharsis, as the relationship between on-camera married couple Sheida and Farhad fails to survive the financial strain of their move to Tehran and the difficulty of earning a living from art. Sheida spray paints her face out of the wedding photo that the set designers had hung in the place of Mahboube’s painting, desperate to remove any sign of herself from the house that had once held hope for their future. A surreal, blood-spattered nightmare scene with wedding attire and boxing gloves adds a camp, red-filtered twist of levity to other scenes that mine the sober emotional pain of separation. As Mahboube adapts to the crew’s presence, even becoming curious enough to get involved in their creative process, it seems the solidarity enabled by collaborative art may just be the way out of her isolation, and a bulwark, more than material things ever could be, against mortality and forgetting. It’s a hopeful possibility that turns this very meta film into its own act of resistance.

Director, screenwriter: Farshad Hashemi
Cast: Farshad Hashemi, Mahboubeh Gholami, Ebrahim Azizi, Zahra Aghapour, Navid AghaeI, Arash Deghan Shad, Shahin Karimi
Producers: Farzad Pak, Farshad Hashemi
Cinematographer: Davood Malek HosseiniProduction Design: Siamak KarinejadSound Design: Zohreh Aliakbari
Music: Peyman Yazdanian
Production companies: PakFilm GmbH (Germany), Istadeh Art Group (Iran), Europe Media Nest s.r.o. (Czech Republic)
World sales: PakFilm GmbH
Festival: Rotterdam (Tiger Competition)
In Farsi
102 minutes

In recent times, she has turned to production, insisting that her industry, Nollywood, should tell its stories differently. This means that her industry’s stories could travel, if something, presumably something technical, changed. That philosophy led to 2018’s Lionheart, which she directed herself and which was later acquired by Netflix. Before that, she produced Road to Yesterday, which was directed by Ishaya Bako. For I Do Not Come To You By Chance, Bako is again director. The film premiered at Toronto last year and is getting its European premiere at IFFR.

These screenings at celebrated venues prove that Nnaji’s philosophy is paying off. But while her production company’s films are getting better, the philosophy hasn’t yet produced its ultimate exemplar in combining Nollywood/Nigerian stories with the highest global standards.

The new film is set in 1990s’ Nigeria and adapted from Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani’s novel of the same title. It follows the life and times of Kingsley (Paul Nnadiekwe), a young man from a struggling family. Years before the tale begins properly, he witnesses one of his relatives, Boniface, get into trouble with his parents. The matter is heated enough for Boniface to get thrown out of their house.

Kingsley is perhaps a little too young to understand that integrity is at the centre of Boniface’s problem with his parents. But as with most kids, a few years into adulthood some things become clear. The journey to this reckoning — with poverty, with being a first son and, memorably, with Uncle Boniface — becomes the main thread of the modest drama that is Kingsley’s life. You can call it the Miseducation of Kingsley.

As these things go, all the reckoning our hero needs is one catalyzing episode, which duly arrives with his father’s illness. The family has no money for Papa’s treatment. The landlord is lurking, looking for his rent. Sure, there is a car. It can be sold. But it will never be enough. Okay…shh…what about Boniface?

Indeed, what about Boniface? Well, in the years since, Boniface has become a big man, his lifestyle funded by scam mails to potential investors. When Kingsley visits Boniface, he receives a proposal. Boniface wants his young, smart relation to join him in his illicit business. But the young man still has integrity ringing in his ears. The question is, for how long?

There is the socio-economic milieu of 1990s Nigeria to consider. It was a harsh time for the average Nigerian, and Bako and company make an implicit case for this in showing viewers that a smart graduate with good grades can’t get a job, while a con man is making a killing fleecing foreign clientele. There might also be a commentary on racial retribution that is sometimes spoken aloud on social media today: scamming white people is a form of reparation. In the 1990s, that commentary was probably louder because a lot of the hardship visited on Nigeria was brought upon the country by the Structural Adjustment Programme, a policy urged on the government by the International Monetary Fund, an agency created by Western powers.

None of this makes it into the film, thankfully. Instead, Bako (who is credited as co-writer with Chika Anadu) takes us through the young man’s life as he attempts to balance his home training with the need for sustenance. These are high stakes for Kingsley, but Bako works his magic subtly —  a little too subtly sometimes. The film needs a kick, and it arrives with the reintroduction of Boniface, who is now properly known as Cash Daddy. In the book, Cash Daddy is the main unforgettable character. He remains so in the film, but he never really becomes larger than life in the same way.

The issue, it appears, is the film’s tone. A bit too keen to establish itself as a serious film with serious themes, I Do Not Come To You By Chance doesn’t quite have the nimbleness to move into the high life when Cash Daddy starts to throw his weight and charisma around. As played by Blossom Chukwujekwu, the man who gave 2023 Nollywood its best leading performance in The Trade, Cash Daddy still shines. But his lustre is bedimmed by the dour atmosphere, a feature this film shares with Lionheart. Thankfully, the chemistry between Cash Daddy and Kingsley abides in the film.

This is particularly clear in one scene featuring a white investor who is being lured into a non-existing deal. The conversation starts coolly but then things go awry when someone speaks off-script. In the tense moments before Kingsley saves the day with extreme cunning and in the moments immediately after, the actors charm the audience with pretty much the same acumen as their characters use to mesmerise their victim. In the future, a buddy comedy with Chukwujewku and Nnadiekwe might be a serviceable pitch.

For now, their work in I Do Not Come will amuse (or be useful) to the millions who have heard of or received scam emails beginning with the infamous words that give this film its title. Readers of the novel might have some misgivings, but not in a way that will cause them to seek a refund.

Director: Ishaya Bako
Screenplay: Chika Anadu, Ishaya Bako
Cast: Paul Nnadiekwe, Blossom Chukwujekwu, Jennifer Eliogu, Norbert YoungProducer: Chioma Onyenwe
Production company: TEN Sales
Cinematography: Femi Awojide
Editor: Eduardo Aquino
Production design: Lucio Seixas
Music: Kulanen Ikyo
In English, Igbo
Venue: Rotterdam
104 minutes

Set against the beautiful backdrop of Kenya’s ocean shorelines, Aisha’s scrappy energy is matched by the film’s easy charm as it sends out the message that the only future that’s predetermined is the one you give up on.

In the small town of Watamu, it’s tradition for children to eventually inherit and run their parents’ businesses. But Aisha has other plans. She wants to become an actress and move to Europe, so she can experience the magic of snowfall and lead the same life as the people in the Western shows and movies she watches on television. This revelation, which comes from a classroom assignment to write about what she wants to be when she grows up, doesn’t go down well. When she’s told to be more realistic, Aisha hatches a new plan: she’ll learn all she can from local fisherman and town drunk Hassan (Bosco Baraka Karisa) for her assignment, and then when she’s older, take a boat and make her own way to Europe.

Presenting (and succeeding) as an endearing and sweet story about a young girl challenging her community’s expectations, multi-hyphenate Hauser has other concerns on his mind bubbling beneath the surface. As Aisha sets out on her own path, her perseverance inspires her older brother Omari (Ibrahim Joseph), who’s been cherry-picked to run the taxi service where their father works, to pursue his own passion for designing clothes instead. All of this mystifies their mother Eveline (Bibi Swaleh), who comes from a generation that doesn’t consider individual happiness or shower affection on their children. She becomes the vessel for the film’s open questions about the impact of continental colonialism via Western media and how it has accelerated changing traditions in Kenya.

No need to worry, however, as these meaningful inquiries float at the edges, wisely not coming to any firm conclusions, and staying out of the way of the picture’s otherwise sun-kissed optimism. The heart of that sensation comes from the natural performances and comfortable chemistry between Hamisi and Karisa, playing two outsiders whose common bond as outsiders forms the basis of a winning friendship. And through them, what emerges is a remarkably intimate and knowing portrait of the interconnectedness of an entire community, and what’s at stake — and what can be gained — from a tear in the social fabric.

If the film feels like a labor of love that’s because it was one. Hauser pulled together a small crew and left no job unturned that he couldn’t handle himself. Not only did he direct the film, but impressively wrote, lensed, edited, co-composed the score, and even drove actors to set. Yet the picture comes off as anything but threadbare or lacking. Even if Hamisi commands the majority of the scenes, you’d never know that Hauser and his team only had access to her on weekends, and for a two-week stretch during school vacation. Waiting for his actress perhaps left the director with more time to shoot the breathtaking ocean vistas that demand a big screen airing. Whatever the meagre resources to shoot the film, the palpable care that went into making it ensures they don’t show.

The making of After The Long Rains can also be viewed as an echo of Aisha’s journey, and a lesson for her about making do with what’s available and not forgetting to appreciate the present moment before rushing into the future. If she takes off too quickly, she might not see her brother succeed, hear the long-sought after words “I love you” from her mother, or come to realize that if you want to see snow, it’s only as far as Mount Kenya. 

Director, screenwriter, producer, cinematography, editing: Damien Hauser
Cast: Eletricer Kache Hamisi, Bibi Swaleh, Bosco Baraka Karisa, Najima Khanda
Music: Simon Emanuel Joss, Damien Hauser
Sound: Aaron Scheuber
Production: Kenya, Switzerland
World sales: Rushlake Media
Venue: International Film Festival Rotterdam (Harbour)
In Swahili
91 minutes

“Barbie is really cool,” Maclean says. “Actually the way it’s worked out with the Oscar nominations is something I’ve experienced for quite a while, where if you make a film that’s too feminine-looking and about women, people don’t take it as seriously. Barbie is a much better movie than Oppenheimer, but some people just can’t take it seriously. But it also plays with that too, it’s a great film. I think it’s a sign of where our culture is at that people can actually get on board with that, because it wasn’t that long ago that you could make an entire film with just men in it.”

The Film Verdict catches up with Maclean at Rotterdam film festival, which is showcasing a decdicated sidebar of her audiovisual art, a lurid sensory feast of post-modern maximalist mash-ups spanning the last decade. The 37-year-old, who went to art school in Edinburgh but now lives in Glasgow, is surprisingly gentle and soft-spoken in person compared to the garish, grotesque, confrontational intensity of her work. Mixing live action and digital animation, comedy and horror, found sounds and creepy costumes, films like Feed Me (2015) and Make Me Up (2018) borrow from fairy tales, cartoons, social media platforms, toy commercials and children’s TV shows, pushing the limits of taste to nightmarish extremes.

“I like this sense of creating work that some people are just repulsed by,” Maclean nods. “Because the repulsion is maybe part of it too. It’s not about beauty in a straight sense, it’s also about something that they perceive as ugly, and they have to get their heads around that. Good taste is usually such an elitist and sexist thing anyway. It is a way of saying you’re implicitly better than other people because your taste is better than theirs. So for me, to take aim at that is to take aim at a certain kind of snobbery.”

Maclean’s war on the tyranny of good taste began at art college, where her brightly coloured, joyfully iconoclastic bubblegum-punk style clashed with the prevailing aesthetic culture. “I had loads of good tutors at art college,” she recalls, “but one guy wasn’t so good. One day I bought a pot of pink paint to paint with, and he just laughed at me. He was disgusted by this idea of painting in pink, and ridiculed me in front of the class. I remember thinking at that moment: I’m going to paint more pink.”

American photographer and performance artist Cindy Sherman was key early influence on Maclean. Both draw on classic movie archetypes, dressing up and playing multiple roles in their work. “At that time, a lot of the artists I was exposed to were men, and she was one of the few women that was kind of in the canon of art,” Maclean says “Also it was partly just seeing how much fun she was having with it, and questioning gender.”

Like Sherman, Andy Warhol and others, Maclean recognises the seductive, subversive power of classic big-screen iconography. Indeed, she is currently working in the screenplay to her first full-length feature, a dark Christmas fantasy set on a Scottish island. “I’d like to make more films for cinema,” she says. “There is a limit to how long you can keep making video art.”

World premiering at Rotterdam, both on the big screen and in gallery installation form, Maclean’s latest project is DUCK, a mind-bending mini-movie that uses digital deepfake simulation to deconstruct James Bond films and spy thrillers in general. As with most of her work, Maclean plays all the roles herself, heavily disguised by green screen and AI technology. Besides playing all the different Bonds, from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig, she also disguises herself as an army of gun-toting Marilyn Monroe doppelgangers. This dazzling deep dive into the Uncanny Valley is Maclean’s most technically ambitious work to date.

“I was drawn to Sean Connery and the Bond character in particular for practical reasons,” she explains. “Because, for deepfake, you need a very consistent character, somebody who doesn’t change their makeup or hair, so you’ve got enough data to train the AI model on. I also thought it was interesting just thinking about that ideal of masculinity. Bond is this kind of archetype of a desirable idea of British masculinity, both subjects which I quite like to satirise. He’s such an absurd character to an extent, almost a comedic character. It doesn’t take much to tip him into that mode.”

Like most of Maclean’s work, DUCK has an undertow of caustic social critique behind its shiny Pop Art surface. The horrors of misogyny, nationalism and neoliberal capitalism are recurring themes, especially how they impact on women and girls. But she is wary of sounding preachy or polemical, preferring to address these issues in a more ironic, playful, mischievous manner.

“It’s hard to think about art having a utilitarian function,” Maclean says. “I don’t think it works like that, but I think it can shift your perception of reality. Art is like a space for reflection. It can change things, but not in a direct A to B way. So much debate happens in this quite polarised way, but I think what art can do is actually speak in a totally different way about our experiences. I guess some art is like propaganda, but I’m not so interested in that. Also, I guess my work is satire. There is a degree to which I think the world is quite an absurd place too. It’s makes me angry, but it’s ridiculous. I want there to be a sense I take it both seriously and not at the same time.”