5 Films to Watch at IFFR 2023

International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) is gaining its most prominent in-person attendees since its 2020 edition after the previous two have been heavily virtual. The fest is known for celebrating the best of summer and fall festival favorites, pushing the envelope and innovativeness in its experimental and artistic programming, and honoring leaders in their respective fields. They are honoring cinematographer Helene Louvart (Murina and The Lost Daughter) with the Robby Müeller Award this year. In addition, they commissioned director Steve McQueen to make the installation Sunshine State to honor the fest’s 50th anniversary. There will also be retrospectives of Bay Area avant-garde filmmaker :arc, Hungarian filmmaker Judit Elek, and video artist Stanya Kahn.

I had the chance to see some of its line-up (more towards newer shorts than features) and would like to provide the five most attention-grabbing films that are worth the watch.

Alpha Kings - Short and Mid-Length (World Premiere)

Still from Alpha Kings. Courtesy of Faye Tsakas and Enrique Pedráza-Botero

Labor gets people where they need to be in life. But, though it can have bleak imagery to one's psyche, it can also be not studious. In Faye Tsakas & Enrique Pedráza-Botero's Alpha Kings (a first-year MFA Stanford doc), three male Only Fans models tackle the duration of gaining income. They display hypersexual affectations to their online fanbase yet inhibit a softer, carefree attitude towards life when the cameras aren't rolling. Tsakas and Pedráza-Botero manufacture a study of performance and masculinity that grapples with the models' need to project a specific version to others for upward mobility yet critique the amount or lack of effort to not stay broke like their fellow college friends. As the filmmakers recognize the models’ work as filmmakers, they let the talent's knowledge of controlling their brand dictate the complexities of going into a direction where they can't go back. It's an intriguing scattershot of how cultural norms predicate one's path to success.

The Eternal Daughter - Limelight (Dutch Premiere)

Still from The Eternal Daughter. Courtesy of A24

It’s rare to see two leading performances from the same actor in the same film in dramas. It’s primarily flimsy and quickly dismissive to take the movie seriously as it’s often for a comedy. However, Tilda Swinton gives each character separate motivations and approaches in viewing life. She makes us suspend our disbelief in her two portrayals. In this latest film from Joanna Hogg (The Souvenir Parts I & II), Swinton plays Rosalind, the mother, and her daughter, Julie, a filmmaker, as they stay at a hotel containing a haunting past with minimal activities to do externally. Throughout the stay, Julie attempts to bond with Rosalind and discovers the ghoulish presence surrounding the hotel and her mother. It’s a minimalistic B-Movie that interrogates memories, ancestry, loss, and accepting the hard truth.

Lotus-Eyed Girl - Short and Mid-Length (World Premiere)

Still from Lotus-Eyed Girl. Courtesy of Rajee Samarasinghe

Traveling within the confinements of psychogeography, colonialism, and spirituality are common threads in Rajee Samarasinghe’s corpus. His newest short Lotus-Eyed Girl is partly based on Bilhana’s love poem Caurapañcāśikā which examines the confidential love between a love thief and a princess. In his reimagining, the eponymous woman goes through a series of events of death and labor while she drools flower petals out of her mouth. Like in many of his experimental critiques of the ethnographic gaze, he obscures reductive conclusions towards wrestling with Sri Lanka’s history through his sound design that accepts the unknown as a friend and praises the meaning of home. Lotus-Eyed Girl yearns for memory, and the precious time we have on Earth. It is a thrilling, gloomy fable of how systems of power and the act to desire are inseparable from each other. 

Playland - Tiger Competition (World Premiere)

Still from Playland. Courtesy of Georden West

How does a dedicated space for marginalized communities remain active despite police raiding, "urban renewal," and its non-physical existence? Newly named 25 New Face Georden West reckons with this dilemma in their debut feature Playland. It follows a night at the eponymous, oldest, diverse LGBTQ bar in Boston. The real-life Playland, founded in 1937, was unfortunately demolished in 1998 in the wake of said actions. So instead of doing a biopic of the bar's history, West builds an imaginary world filled with Jarman-Esque costume-designed characters and production design that make the spectacle mundane and Meilies's magical yet believable cinematography. As flashes of flickering lights and a lineage of prominent tangible materials (off-camera songs, archival materials, etc.) speak to the characters' stories, Playland tackles what's known into a physical space with new memories and legacies that honor Playland's staff and patrons. West cherishes Playland's wonders, mysteriousness, and inhabitants. As a result, they forgo presenting a history that often contains gentrification and police brutality at the forefront.

Saint Omer -  Limelight (Dutch Premiere)

Still from Saint Omer. Courtesy of Super Ltd.

The way information is distributed impacts the way one sees the world. In Alice Diop's narrative debut feature, she investigates the conundrum when Senegalese immigrant Laurence Coly (the stunning Guslagie Malanda) is on trial for the infanticide of her mixed-race daughter. However, the story centers on incoming mother Rama comprehending and understanding Coly's case. Virtually everything the audience knows about Laurence is based on white people's perceptions of her physical appearance instead of factual statements about her life or the content of her character. Coly is complex in finding solutions to her case, which she sounds like a truth-teller or a liar when she uses sorcery as a defense strategy. Yet, Diop presents a retelling based on a real-life event and doesn't do a conclusive reading in her Oscar-shortlisted exploration of Black motherhood and female interiority.

You can read the rest of the program here.