Rotterdam Festival Chiefs on Cate Blanchett, Nurturing Connection With Dutch Audiences and Focus on Indonesia

variety.com:

Rafa Sales Ross Guest Contributor Now in their second year working together within the dual leadership structure of the International Film Festival Rotterdam, festival director Vanja Kaludjercic and managing director Clare Stewart are confidently looking into the future.

The duo is heading into the festival’s 54th edition, taking place between Jan. 30 – Feb. 9, having just secured funding for the next four iterations and thinking of ways to deepen their connection to local audiences and their wide net of international filmmakers.

In the year and a half since being appointed, Stewart says she has “properly become a Rotterdam resident and got much more of a connection with the spirit of the city and how the festival is embedded in it.” In the last year, she and Kaludjercic have worked on a five-year strategy following the success of the 2024 edition, which the managing director says “has met all financial challenges [despite] quite a large business remodeling” that had as one of its main focuses not to make the process “visible or palpable” to filmmakers and audiences.

On top of working on the festival’s business strategy with Stewart, Kaludjercic has been busy with a year-long program of activities designed to feed into audience development. “We have film club initiatives with different organizations across the city that serve very different purposes, from street culture crowds to the Buddy Film Foundation, which supports refugee filmmakers,” the festival director tells Variety. “We have events almost every week.