Rotterdam Film Festival reveals 2020 line-up; ‘Mosquito’ to open

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Mosquito_Film Still 1

Source: IFFR

‘Mosquito’

João Nuno Pinto’s Mosquito is to open the 49^th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR, Jan 22-Feb 2), which has unveiled its full line-up of competition titles.

Scroll down for full list of titles

Mosquito follows a 17-year-old Portuguese recruit who gets lost in the African wilderness in 1917 and marks the second feature from Portuguese director Pinto following 2010’s América. It will also compete in IFFR’s Big Screen Competition.

The festival will close with Marielle Heller’s A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood, starring Tom Hanks as US icon Fred Rogers.

The 10 films in this year’s Tiger Competition will all receive their world premieres in Rotterdam and are comprised of new and upcoming talent.

El Año Del Descubrimiento marks the second feature of Spanish director Luis López Carrasco, whose debut El Futuro screened at IFFR in 2014, and centres on seemingly incidental conversations in a bar in Cartagena, which expose an almost forgotten piece of social history.

Also returning to Rotterdam are Argentinian filmmaker Alejandro Telemaco Tarraf and Greek director Janis Rafa, who previously presented shorts at IFFR and are making their feature debuts with Piedra Sola and Kala Azar respectively.

The Tiger Competition will also include Arun Karthick’s Nasir, which received support from the Hubert Bals Fund in 2017 and 2018. Karthick’s previous film, The Strange Case of Shiva, screened in IFFR’s Bright Future Competition in 2016.

The Tiger jury comprises Dutch-Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad, Visions du Réel artistic director Emilie Bujès, South Korean-born US filmmaker Kogonada, Dutch director Sacha Polak and Indonesian artist Hafiz Rancajale. They will choose the winners of the Tiger Award, worth €40,000, and the Special Jury Award, worth €10,000. Polak’s Dirty God opened last year’s festival.

Big Screen Competition

Nine films have been selected IFFR’s Big Screen Competition, in which an audience jury will award the VPRO Big Screen Award. This is worth €30,000 and guarantees a local theatrical release as well as screening on Dutch public television.

The titles include Thomas Clay’s Fanny Lye Deliver’d, which depicts the political and sexual liberation of a deeply religious woman, played by Maxine Peake, in 1657 England. It will receive its international premiere in Rotterdam following its debut at the BFI London Film Festival in October.

Receiving its world premiere is Eden, the third feature of Hungarian director Ágnes Kocsis, whose Adrienn Pál won the FIPRESCI prize at Cannes and the Critics’ Choice Award at Zurich in 2010.

Argentina’s Marco Berger will present the world premiere of his newest film El Cazador, which centres on a teenage boy who receives a video of him having sex with another young man. Berger won Berlin’s Teddy Award in 2011 with teacher-student drama Absent.

The selection also includes new features from French director Sophie Letourneur, whose comedy-drama Chicks screened at Cannes and IFFR in 2010, and Taiwanese director Chang Tso-chi, who was last in Rotterdam in 1997 with Ah Chung. Letourneur’s Énorme and Tso-chi’s Synapses with both receive their international premieres at IFFR.

As well as the 15 feature debuts in the Bright Future Competition, IFFR also announced it will screen David Cronenberg’s 1996 film Crash, with the Howard Shore score performed live by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra.

Screen revealed last week that Vanja Kaludjercic will take the reins from outgoing director Bero Beyer for the 50th anniversary edition of the festival in 2021. Beyer is to take over as CEO of the Netherlands Film Fund in March.