New feature from Girl With a Dragon Tattoo director Niels Arden Oplev one of three film added to IFFR’s first simultaneous live screening event.

Speed Walking

International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has added three new titles to its inaugural simultaneous live screening strand, IFFR Live.

They include the world premiere of documentary Erbarme dich - Matthäus Passion Stories and the European premieres of Speed Walking, from The Girl With a Dragon Tattoo director Niels Arden Oplev, and Melody, from Bernard Bellefroid.

The event, established in partnership with Fortissimo Films, TrustNordisk and Doc & Film, will screen five film premieres during the 44th IFFR (Jan 21 - Feb 1) and simultaneously beam them to cinemas and VOD platforms in multiple territories across Europe. The initiative is supported by the European Commission.

IFFR previously announced the first of the selected titles, Atlantic, from Dutch writer/director Jan-Willem van Ewijk, which debuted at Toronto. The fifth title, completing the IFFR Live line-up, has yet to be revealed.

Dutch documentary Erbarme dich - Matthäus Passion Stories is directed by Ramón Gieling and explores people’s relationship with Bach’s St Matthew Passion, set against the backdrop of a church which has fallen into disrepair.

Represented by Doc & Film and produced by KeyDocs, the film is a co-production with NCRV, supported by Netherlands Film Fund, Dutch Cultural Media Fund, CoBO and Fund 21. It will be released in the Netherlands in spring 2015 by ABC - Cinemien.

Speed Walking centres on a teenage boy forced to deal with confused sexuality and the loss of his mother in a provincial setting in 1976, where the famed Danish liberation of porn has had its influence on the grownups.

The film is represented by TrustNordisk and produced by Nordisk Film Production.

Bellefroid’s Melody centres on a young woman who decides to become a surrogate mother in return for a large sum of money. The contracting mother, a rich Englishwoman, forces the slightly unstable Melody to come and live with her and the two become close - until tragedy strikes.

Melody is represented by Doc & Film and produced by Artemis Productions, Samsa Film, Liaison Cinématographique and Mille et Une Nuits. The film will be released in the Benelux by Cinéart. 

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