52nd International Film Festival Rotterdam

25 January - 5 February 2023

Rotterdam, 12 January 2023

International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) is proud to present its Art Directions programme for 2023. Alongside the IFFR-commissioned Steve McQueen artwork Sunshine State presented in collaboration with Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, the multi-disciplinary Art Directions programme presents installations, its sound//vision programme of audio-visual performances at WORM, and a lineup of immersive media. The festival also continues to announce plans for its local talent-focused RTM Day and across the programme as attending guests continue to confirm, with general ticket sales starting on 20 January. 

Festival director Vanja Kaludjercic: “As we are gearing up towards the festival, it’s incredibly rewarding to see the last pieces of this big puzzle coming together. These include the latest additions to the film programme and more and more guests confirming their much awaited comeback to Rotterdam. In addition to the film programme introduced last month, we proudly present the Art Directions lineup of live performances, installations and virtual reality. Art Directions represents all our ambitions for the programme in 2023, expanding our understanding of everything cinema can be. In locations such as our Rotterdam Central Station, the Depot and WORM, we’re making sure we can’t be missed across our home city.”

Art Directions presents six expanded cinematic installations. In Rotterdam’s Central Station, multidisciplinary Chinese artist Shuang Li presents one of her two installations in the programme, inviting  the public to consider the implications of our ever-evolving digital world, with her installation Æther (Poor Objects) – combining the imagery of the annular solar eclipse with a ring light commonly used by online vloggers. 

Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili, who premiered her debut feature Beginning at IFFR 2021, brings her installation Captives to Rotterdam. The artwork was presented at the Tabakalera during the San Sebastián International Film Festival as part of Vive le cinéma!, an exhibition previously part of IFFR in collaboration with Eye Filmmuseum. The installation, hosted at WORM’s S/ash Gallery, invites the audience into the deeply intimate space of an on-screen character.

IFFR previously announced the Steve McQueen artwork Sunshine State presented in collaboration with Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen.

Click here to read more about Sunshine State.

• Æther (Poor Objects), Shuang Li, 2021, China

• Anubis Is Not a Dog, Zapruder, 2021, Italy

• Captives, Dea Kulumbegashvili, 2022, Georgia

• Déjà Vu, Shuang Li, 2022, Switzerland

• Spectral Constellations, Semiconductor, 2022, United Kingdom

• Sunshine State, Steve McQueen, 2022, United Kingdom

See the Art Directions: Installations lineup here. 

 Stills from Æther (Poor Objects) and Déjà Vu

IFFR’s on-site return means a host of special guests will be joining us in Rotterdam. As well as Steve McQueen presenting Sunshine State in Art Directions, filmmakers, actors and talent attending the festival include Frank Grillo and John Swab, the actor and director respectively behind Little Dixie. Darren Aronofsky will be present with his film The Whale also in the Limelight programme. Geraldine Chaplin attends – playing the General in Luka Jessica Woodworth's take on Dino Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe.

Japanese filmmaker Naomi Kawase, director of Official Film of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, will be present in Rotterdam, as will French actor and filmmaker Mathieu Amalric whose feature debut Mange ta soupe features in the Cinema Regained programme. Maryam Touzani joins also, director of Morocco’s 2023 Oscars submission The Blue Caftan.

Seven distinct live audio-visual performances will infuse music with filmmaking at WORM in Rotterdam from 26 to 29 January. Classically trained musician, composer and producer Midori Hirano creates sounds with pulsating, transforming and mesmerising atmospheres and textures, performing Distant Symphony AV with live visuals by filmmaker Markus Wambsganss.

In Orphax: Untitled Music for Fernando, Orphax, the musical project by Amsterdam-based Sietse van Erve, will perform the world premiere of a musical piece set to visuals by Portuguese artist Fernando José Pereira. Another Netherlands-based filmmaker Dick Verdult, whose Als uw gat maar lacht premieres in the festival’s Harbour section, uses his musical moniker Dick el Demasiado to perform Celulitis Popular, a combination of found-footage excerpts from popular culture with a danceable soundtrack of experimental and eccentric cumbia lunática. 

• Ayankoko Presents: AV Reactive Performance, Ayankoko, 2022, France

• Celulitis Popular, Dick el Demasiado, 2022, Netherlands, Argentina 

• Distant Symphony AV, MimiCof & Kaliber16, 2022, Germany

• Fractures chimiques, Charles-André Coderre, Mathieu Arsenault, 2022, Canada

• Orphax: Untitled Music for Fernando, Orphax, Netherlands, 2022

• Ritual for a Dying Planet, Fraction, 2022, France

• Shadows of Machines, Pierre Bastien, 2022, Netherlands

Each night there will be an afterparty with sets from DJ Turkana, Chinnamasta, Charmaine and OG Karin. 

See the Art Directions: sound//vision lineup here.

Clockwise, stills from: Ayankoko Presents: AV Reactive Performance, Ritual for a Dying Planet, Orphax: Untitled Music for Fernando, Distant Symphony AV 

Art Directions is IFFR’s space for virtual, expanded and augmented reality. Five works are presented in the Immersive Media section, including three world premieres. Gina Thorstensen’s interactive Kabaret is a playful ecological VR experience on the plight of coral reefs, complete with a singing shrimp. No Place But Here by Annie Nisenson and Dylan Valley uses virtual-reality technology to immerse us in the ‘Reclaim the City’ movement in Woodstock, South Africa.  

Night Creatures, an augmented reality work originally commissioned by the Melbourne International Film Festival, conjures bat creatures who are able to pop into the flow of a real festival environment via the mobile phones of IFFR visitors.

• All Unsaved Progress Will Be Lost, Mélanie Courtinat, 2022, France, Dutch premiere

• By the Shore, Inoue Hiroki, 2023, Japan, world premiere

• Kabaret, Gina Thorstensen, 2023, Norway, world premiere

• Night Creatures, Isobel Knowles, Van Sowerwine, 2022, Australia, international premiere

• No Place But Here, Dylan Valley, Annie Nisenson, 2023, South Africa, world premiere

See the Art Directions: Immersive Media lineup here.

Clockwise, stills from: All Unsaved Progress Will Be Lost, Night Creatures, Kabaret, By the Shore 

Performance, live events and expanded cinema are not only to be found in Art Directions at IFFR 2023. LantarenVenster will be taken over by a host of Rotterdam film, music, installations, and discussion during the RTM Day on Friday 27 January 2023, dedicated to showcasing local talent.

Amongst the expansive lineup is the compilation Kondre Man, which offers two shorts on the Surinamese experience in the Netherlands: Waka nanga mi and Grandeloge Filantropia. Following the screening, the audience will be guided by a vocal performance to the foyer for an after-party featuring local DJs. 

Vincent Boy Kars, whose Drama Girl competed in the Tiger Competition in 2020, presents his latest short SOLO at RTM, about two Rotterdam housemates who live separate lives. The soundtrack was composed by local producer, performer, DJ and film composer Subfiction, who will also launch his latest album at RTM following the screening.

Browse the RTM lineup here.

Still from the films Grandeloge Filantropia and Waka naga mi

The IFFR 2023 programme was announced at the press conference on 19 December. Alongside the films in the festival’s competitive strands, titles were announced across the programme.

Harbour welcomes the world premiere of WICKED GAMES Rimini Sparta, a combined and staggeringly different experience of Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl's diptych Rimini and Sparta, on the stories of two brothers and the inescapability of the past. Fellow Austrian and IFFR regular Peter Schreiner presents the world premiere of Tage, a unique essay in stream-of-conscious filmmaking anchored in the director’s ailing body. Seidl and Schreiner’s long-standing presence at IFFR is a testament to the festival’s mutual non-conformist spirit.Lav Diaz, who sits on the Tiger Competition Jury, presents his latest film When the Waves Are Gone, alongside the world premiere of Italian filmmaker Lyda Patitucci’s gripping crime thriller Come pecore in mezzo ai lupi. Set in a black community in South London, Dionne Edwards’s vibrant debut feature Pretty Red Dress, has its international premiere. Namibian filmmaker Perivi John Katjavivi presents the world premiere of his occultist noir Under the Hanging Tree. 

Limelight presents the world premiere of Danish filmmaker Karoline Lyngbye's first feature, the metaphysical thriller Superposition. The debut from Dutch filmmaker Aaron Rookus, Goodbye Stranger, also has its world premiere, as does A House in Jerusalem by Palestinian filmmaker Muayad Alayan, a project formerly presented at IFFR’s co-production market CineMart. Celebrated anime creator Oshii Mamoru's tale about four schoolgirls and a vampire I can't stop biting you also has its international premiere. 

Click here for the film stills.

Browse the IFFR 2023 programme here.