Danish director Anders Thomas Jensen’s comedy Riders Of Justice starring Mads Mikkelsen will open the 50th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). The festival is taking place as multi-part event from February to June 2021, with the first part running as hybrid festival from February 1-7. Organisers hope it will culminate in a physical event from June 2-6, 2021.
Some 60 titles spanning the Tiger Competition, Big Screen Competition and its Ammodo Tiger Shorts and Limelight sections are screening in February.
The festival’s flagship Tiger Competition will showcase 16 titles, which will compete for the €40,000 Tiger award and two special jury awards, worth €10,000 each.
The Tiger jury will feature filmmaker and visual artist Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, artistic director of International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) Orwa Nyrabia, visual artist and filmmaker Hala Elkoussy, critic Helena van der Meulen and film producer Ilse Hughan.
The aim is for the jurors to watch the films together on the big screen if conditions permit. The IFFR awards ceremony will take place on February 7.
Scroll down for the full list of titles
“In a year like no other, filmmakers have gone above and beyond to complete works in challenging circumstances, and there has been no shortage of great films looking for a home at IFFR,” said festival director Vanja Kaludjercic.
”This edition’s revised Tiger Competition and Big Screen Competition, as well as the Ammodo Tiger Short Competition, encapsulate IFFR’s spirit as a platform for the discovery of visions that pique our curiosity and capture our imagination. The sheer determination of these striking new voices is exhilarating, and I’m proud that we can bring an outstanding selection to our film-loving audiences in new ways that captivate the collective spirit.”
The one-off redesign has been devised in response to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, which is expected to keep much of Europe under full or partial lockdown in the early months of 2021.
IFFR’s managing director Marjan van der Haar said that the aim was to hold both small physical screenings for each of the selected titles, followed by online screenings, which will be available for 72-hours.
“We will have physical and online premieres, with the online premiere starting a little bit after the physical premieres. They will all have a live Q&A. But next to that, in these times when people are very used to watching films online in their own time and place, we will grant them 72 hours to watch the at the film,” she said.
The move to expand the selections of the Tiger Competition and Big Screen Competitions to 16 titles is part of a wider, long term restructuring of the festival, and was not linked to the one-off 2021 plans.
“By increasing the number of competition slots in the Tiger and Big Screen competitions we want to bring more weight and gravitas to them,” said Kaludjercic.
In other details, the festival also revealed that US director Kelly Reichardt will receive the festival’s honorary Robby Müller Award named after the late Dutch cinematographer and granted to a filmmaker who has ”created authentic, credible and emotionally striking visual language throughout their work”.
”Kelly has a long-standing relationship already with IFFR. We presented her films Old Joy, Meek’s Cutoff and Wendy And Lucy meets, she’s a wonderful example of a filmmaker who grew into one of the most established filmmakers of contemporary cinema,” said van der Haar.
Reichardt’s latest film First Cow will play in the festival’s Limelight section and she will also participate in the IFFR Talks programme, which will also feature Benoît Jacquot, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Mosese, Dea Kulumbegashvili and Nicolás Jaar.
IFFR 2020 line-up part 1.
Tiger Competition
Agate Mousse (Lebanon) world premiere
Dir. Selim Mourad
Bebia, à mon seul désir (Georgia, UK) world premiere
Dir. Juja Dobrachkous
Bipolar (China) world premiere
Dir. Queena Li
Black Medusa (Tunisia) world premire
Dir. ismaël, Youssef Chebbi
A Corsican Summer (France) world premiere
Dir. Pascal Tagnat
The Edge of Daybreak (Thailand/Switzerland) world premiere
Dir. Taiki Sakpisit
Feast (Netherlands) world premiere
Dir. Tim Leyendekker
Friends and Strangers (Australia) world premiere
Dir. James Vaughan
Gritt (Norway) international premiere
Dir, Itonje Søimer Guttormsen
Landscapes of Resistance (Serbia/Germany/France) world premiere
Dir. Marta Popivoda
Liborio (Dominican Republic/Puerto Rico/Qatar) world premiere
Dir. Nino Martínez Sosa
Looking for Venera ( Kosovo/Macedonia) world premiere
Dir. Norika Sefa, 2021
Madalena
Dir. Madiano Marcheti
Mayday (US) international premiere
Dir, Karen Cinorre
Mighty Flash (Spain) world premiere
Dir. Ainhoa Rodríguez
Big Screen Competition
Archipel (Canada) world premiere
Dir. Félix Dufour-Laperrière
Aristocrats (Japan) international premiere
Dir. Sode Yukiko
As We Like It (Taiwan) world premiere
Dir. Chen Hung-i & Muni Wei.
Aurora (Costa Rica, Mexico) world premiere
Dir. Paz Fábrega
Carro Rei (Brazil) world premiere
Dir. Renata Pinheiro
The Cemil Show (Turkey) world premiere
Dir. Bariş Sarhan
Drifting (Hong Kong) world premiere
Dir. Li Jun
The Harbour (India), world premiere
Dir. Rajeev Ravi
The Last Farmer (India) world premiere
Dir. M. Manikandan
Lone Wolf (Australia) world premiere
Dir. Jonathan Ogilvie
The North Wind (Russia) world premiere
Dir. Renata Litvinova
El perro que no calla (Argentina) European premiere
Dir. Ana Katz
Sexual Drive (Japan) world premiere
Dir. Yoshida Kota
Les Sorcières de l’Orient (France) world premiere
Dir. Julien Faraut
The Year Before the War (Latvia) world premiere
Dir. Dāvis Sīmanis
Limelight
Beginning (France/Georgia) Dutch premiere
Dir. Dea Kulumbegashvili
Dead & Beautiful (Netherlands, Taiwan) world premiere
Dir. David Verbeek
Dear Comrades! (Russia) Dutch premiere
Dir. Andrei Konchalovsky
First Cow (US) Dutch premiere
Dir. Kelly Reichardt
Mandibules (France) Dutch premiere
Dir. Quentin Dupieux
Mitra (Netherlands) world premiere
Dir. Kaweh Modiri
La nuit des rois (France, Ivory Coast, Canada) Dutch premiere
Dir. Philippe Lacôte
Quo vadis, Aida? (Bosnia and Herzegovina) Dutch premiere
Dir. Jasmila Žbanić
Riders of Justice (Denmark) international premiere
Dir. Anders Thomas Jensen
Septet: The Story of Hong Kong (Hong Kong, China), Dutch premiere
Dir. Sammo Hung, Ann Hui, Patrick Tam, YuenWoo-ping, Johnnie To, Ringo Lam, Tsui Hark
Shorta (Denmark) international premiere
Dir. Anders Ølholm, Frederik Louis Hviid
Suzanna Andler (France) international premiere
Dir. Benoît Jacquot
Sweat (Poland) international premiere
Dir. Magnus von Horn
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