Ten high­lights from the 2023 Rot­ter­dam Film Festival

And we’re back… As film fes­ti­vals across the globe strained to adjust to the logis­ti­cal (and emo­tion­al!) tumult of the pan­dem­ic, Rot­ter­dam found itself hav­ing to hit the bench for two edi­tions, deliv­er­ing large­ly dig­i­tal-focused fes­ti­vals. In 2023 they return with a vengeance (and, under­stand­ably, a tighter bud­get) to cel­e­brate a cin­e­ma that is touched by exper­i­men­ta­tion and high artistry, one that not so much sits on the fringes of the main­stream, but exists as its own van­guard for the chal­leng­ing, the thought-pro­vok­ing, the pas­sion­ate and the per­son­al. As a mod­er­ate­ly long-time attendee of the fes­ti­val, it’s the place you go to find some­thing new, with young film­mak­ers test­ing the ten­sile strength of the medi­um, and old hands being unafraid to mark their work with an auteurist stamp. So on that note, here are a cou­ple of highlights.

This inge­nious Hun­gar­i­an cut-up job sees cine-alchemist Péter Lichter plun­der­ing an archive of over 100 silent film prints and filch­ing any fleet­ing moments that con­nect to the plot of Agatha Christine’s first Poirot nov­el, 1920’s ​‘The Mys­te­ri­ous Affair at Styles’. So as the text is being intoned and sub­ti­tled on the screen, we have a cas­cade of images fea­tur­ing das­tard­ly cads and trag­ic dowa­gers (and there’s added lay­ers of DOS load­ing screens and 1990s PC games such as Doom thrown into the mix). It’s a fun, clever lark, but would work like gang­busters if you knew Hun­gar­i­an, as it’s very tough to read the dense sub­ti­tles and lav­ish in the tor­rent of images at the same time.

Math­ieu Amal­ric has said he’s dialling back the act­ing to focus on his first loves: direct­ing and music. Hav­ing recent­ly been tour­ing a set of video pieces made in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the exper­i­men­tal jazz sax­o­phon­ist John Zorn, he swung by Rot­ter­dam to present a new 2K restora­tion of his fruity 1995 direc­to­r­i­al debut, Mange ta Soupe, a slice of mad­cap mem­oir about a son return­ing home to his age­ing lit­er­ary crit­ic moth­er who has bar­ri­cad­ed her­self in with piles of books cov­er­ing every wall and most doors. It’s a zingy French farce that proves Amal­ric was always as dab a hand behind the cam­era as he is in front. Hope­ful­ly a Blu-ray will be incoming…

Prob­a­bly the best Edo-era Japan­ese black-and-white Acad­e­my ratio rom­com about the bur­geon­ing love between a timid school­teacher with a slashed throat and a sur­pris­ing­ly buff ​“manure man” – paid for col­lect­ing human slop from ten­e­ment latrines and ship­ping it to the coun­try­side to be used for fer­tilis­er. If you can get over the sound effects used for the slosh­ing of fae­cal slur­ry, this clas­si­cal­ly-mount­ed love sto­ry from Japan­ese vet­er­an Sakamo­to Jun­ji com­bines intrigu­ing counter his­to­ry with a gen­uine­ly touch­ing meet­ing of ran­dom hearts (with poo).

There was a fair bit of pan­dem­ic cin­e­ma at this year’s fes­ti­val, and Con­stan­za Feld­man and Agustín Mendilaharzu’s Clementi­na proved that hark­ing back to our col­lec­tive mem­o­ries of domes­tic impris­on­ment didn’t have to be a drag. Feld­man plays the Tati-like title char­ac­ter who goes around her dai­ly rou­tines set to a sym­pho­ny of OTT foley cues, while the film itself plays like a wry satire of the ardu­ous process and some­times heart­break­ing process we go through to make a house a home. Wins inau­gur­al award for finest final shot of the festival.

We all know when it comes to per­son­al col­lec­tions of arcane curiosi­ties, Guiller­mo del Toro rules the roost. What 88-year-old Czech stop-motion mae­stro and ded­i­cat­ed sur­re­al­ist Jan Švankma­jer is say­ing to del Toro is: hold my lop­sided and bejew­elled flagon of beer. Kun­stkam­era oper­ates as an ener­vat­ing and emo­tion­al last will and tes­ta­ment, as it con­sists of a visu­al itin­er­ary of his and his late wife’s con­sid­er­able art hold­ings set to the music of Vival­di (played both for­ward and back­wards). The art itself is com­plete­ly wild and unique, most of which seems like it was sal­vaged from as-yet-undis­cov­ered cul­tures on dis­tant moons, but the film oper­ates as a lament to that old say­ing about a life spent amass­ing mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions: ​“You can’t take it with you.”

The beau­ty of film fes­ti­vals is just tak­ing a roll of the dice and watch­ing some­thing that cor­re­sponds to a slot you hap­pen to have in your sched­ule. Such was the case with Zai­da Carmona’s Girl­friends and Girl­friends, a fond and flighty trib­ute to the part­ner-swap­ping, bed-hop­ping antics in the films of French direc­tor Eric Rohmer. Car­mona is superb in the lead as she pon­ders some rebound romance in the shad­ow of heart­break, and it’s all set to an incred­i­ble sound­track by Barcelona’s soon-to-be elec­tro-pop sen­sa­tion, Maisonieria. Seek it out.

With­out doubt the most mov­ing moment of this year’s fes­ti­val came in a post film Q&A by Burk­i­nan direc­tor Dris­sa Touré who, at the age of 70, has been sub­sist­ing as a wood sell­er since the late 90s. The fes­ti­val pre­sent­ed ret­ro­spec­tive screen­ings of his two direc­to­r­i­al efforts, 1991’s Laa­da, and 1995’s Hara­muya, the lat­ter of which led to his ostraci­sa­tion, not only from the film com­mu­ni­ty but also his own fam­i­ly. Touré made the film after see­ing Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, and it con­sists of much scan­dal and vice on the streets of Oua­gadougou. Its tren­chant cri­tique of a cor­rupt Imam even led Touré to renounce his Mus­lim faith. Need­less to say, Touré is some­one whose work should be seen and cel­e­brat­ed fare and wide.

This extra­or­di­nary instal­la­tion piece from film­mak­er Steve McQueen was a Rot­ter­dam high­light, and com­pounds the festival’s rep­u­ta­tion for cham­pi­oning seri­ous artist film­mak­ing (it’s one of a num­ber of such pre­sen­ta­tions). The 20-minute piece sees McQueen nar­rat­ing a sto­ry, told to him by his late father while on his deathbed, regard­ing a vio­lent racist encounter he suf­fered when work­ing as an orange-pick­er in Flori­da in the 1950s. On the screen, remixed footage from the 1927 film The Jazz Singer con­tex­tu­alis­es and cri­tiques ingrained racist atti­tudes as Al Jol­son is seen mer­ri­ly apply­ing black­face over and over again while gab­bing with a cho­rus girl. It’s a tremen­dous work, blud­geon­ing and whol­ly effec­tive trans­mit­ting a sense of howl­ing rage.

I had heard whis­pers that this was a good one from its screen­ings at the Venice Film Fes­ti­val in 2022, but noth­ing quite pre­pared me for Lau­ra Citarella’s exis­ten­tial opus that is, boiled down, about a pas­sion­ate woman who changes her mind. Set in the fair­ly glum city of Trenque Lauquen, it’s four-and-a-half our run­time is split into two chap­ters, the first of which sees a cou­ple uncov­er a quaint mys­tery when they dis­cov­er a series of love let­ters hid­den in library books, and then the sec­ond, well… let’s just say that say some­thing hap­pens which com­plete­ly monop­o­lis­es the woman’s atten­tion and she sud­den­ly piv­ots to some­thing else. Despite the run­time, this is now slow cin­e­ma – it’s a com­plete­ly engross­ing, sur­pris­ing and, even­tu­al­ly, tran­scen­dent, albeit in a melan­choly sort of way.

This year I was pulling dou­ble-duty as both jour­nal­ist and mod­er­a­tor, in that I was giv­en the delight­ful and reward­ing task of host­ing a series of press con­fer­ences with the mak­ers of the 16 films pit­ted against one anoth­er for this year’s Tiger Award. These titles – all first or sec­ond films – ranged from spec­u­la­tive queer his­to­ry (Geor­den West’s Play­land) and an Iran­ian kinder­garten com­e­dy (Amir Toodehroosta’s Numb), to naked­ly reveal­ing auto por­traits (Gio­van­ni Bucchieri’s 100 Sea­sons, Gui­do van der Werve’s The Breath of Life), lilt­ing sum­mer romances (Diego Llorente’s Notes from a Sum­mer) and snap­py lock­down farces (Lukas Nathrath’s One Last Night), to namecheck just a hand­ful of the films. It’s a com­pe­ti­tion that pro­motes free, true and idio­syn­crat­ic expres­sion, and even while attempt­ing to remain diplo­mat­ic, I can hon­est­ly say that any one of these films could jus­ti­fi­ably pick up the big prize and I wouldn’t bat an eyelid.

The 2023 Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val Rot­ter­dam runs from 25 Jan­u­ary to 5 Feb­ru­ary. For more infor­ma­tion on the line-up and prizes, head to iffr​.com