Rotterdam Heads Talk Fest’s Christopher Nolan, Sandra Hüller Connections & Focus On New Talent
deadline.comThe International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) opens this evening with New Zealand director Jonathan Olgilvie’s coming-of-age tale Head South set against the late 1970s, post-punk music culture of his home city of Christchurch.
IFFR previously selected Olgilvie’s sci-fi thriller Lone Wolf for its Big Screen Competition in 2021. “It’s the first time we’re going to meet him in person because it was during Corona,” says IFFR Artistic Director Vanja Kaludjercic of the first selection. “When you put the two films side by side, you ask how can one filmmaker make two such different films,” she adds. “We really admire his creativity and ingenuity.” Over the course of the next 10 days, Rotterdam will screen some 440 works.
The Main Competition for this 53rd edition is characteristically diverse. The 14 features in the running for main Tiger Award include Brooklyn-based filmmaker Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire, exploring the life of anti-colonialist Martinique-born French writer, and Justin Anderson’s Deborah Levy adaptation, Swimming Home.
Malayalam Cinema star Midhun Murali’s directorial feature political thriller debut Kiss Wagon is also in the mix, alongside Ukrainian director Dmytro Moiseiev’s meditation on war Grey Bees, and Brazilian drama Praia Formosa by Julia De Simone, about a woman trafficked from Africa in the 19th Century who wakes up to find herself in Rio de Janeiro’s present day port region known as “Little Africa”. “Since its inception in 1972, Rotterdam has always had the desire and this sort of ethos to program films that otherwise wouldn’t get into cinemas in the Netherlands, or may not even Europe” says Kaludjercic. “It’s a home to those cinematic adventures, but also nations
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