46th International Film Festival Rotterdam

25 January - 5 February 2017

Rotterdam, 4 January 2017

International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) today announces the full line-up of its Bright Future programme, including the titles that will compete for the Bright Future Award. From this edition of IFFR on, Impact Cinema has adopted this award which goes to a feature debut filmmaker with a world or international première in the Bright Future programme. This year’s jury is made up of filmprofessionals Marta Donzelli, Marleen Slot and Jean-Pierre Rehm. 

The competition for the Impact Cinema Bright Future Award 2017 consists of sixteen debut films from all corners of the world. From the personal Chinese documentary Children Are Not Afraid of Death, Children Are Afraid of Ghosts by Rong Guang Rong to Caroline Leone’s melancholy Brazilian road movie Pela janela. From closer to the Netherlands, there is the ironic-hip but committed Selbstkritik eines bürgerlichen Hundes by Julian Radlmaier and from Belgium the film essay Inside the Distance by Elias Grootaers.

Children Are Not Afraid of Death, Children Are Afraid of Ghosts; Pela janela; Selbstkritik eines bürgerlichen Hundes; Inside the Distance

This year, Impact Cinema – a Dutch hothouse for up-and-coming and proven film talent striving for innovation within the film sector – associates its name with the award for the first time. Noëlle Haitsma (Impact Cinema): “With Impact Cinema, we push for innovations in the film sector that ensure that filmmakers can reach larger, broader audiences with new points of view, themes of contemporary relevance and films that initiate change. These initiatives concern the production all the way through to the distribution of thought-provoking films: ‘Cinema That Changes the Picture’. The focus on innovation and talent development within the Bright Future Competition and IFFR corresponds to Impact Cinema’s mission. After all, Bright Future is where IFFR brings together new film blood and socially committed film art.''

The jury of the Impact Cinema Bright Future Award will be made up of Italian film producer Marta Donzelli (Le quattro volte, among others); Marleen Slot, Netherlands producer for Viking Film (Neon Bull, among others) and chair of Film Producers Netherlands (FPN); and Jean-Pierre Rehm, director of the leading French film festival FID Marseille.

A Heart of Love (left); Banseom Pirates Seoul Inferno (right)

Outside of this competition, Bright Future also presents the premières of a number of second feature films by promising filmmakers. For example, Jung Yoonsuk from Korea, whose Non-fiction Diary garnered much praise in 2012, will be attending Rotterdam with his punk activist documentary Bamseom Pirates Seoul Inferno. Mariano Luque, whose debut Salsipuedes screened in Cannes, presents the sensitive film Otra madre. Polish director Lukasz Ronduda (The Performer) will be showing A Heart of Love, a fictionalised artists’ portrait. All of these new productions are international and cosmopolitan in their own way. Either in their method of production or finance, locations used, the composition of cast and crew or in their themes: in contemporary independent film, no one can escape the consequences of globalisation.

For the complete line-up of Bright Future 2017 click here.