IFFR 2025 Roundup
Faten Hamama in The Open Door (Henry Barakat, 1963)
I attended 5 days of IFFR between Jan 31 - Feb 4. It was third visit after 2020 and 2023 (in 2021 and 2022 I experienced the online version of the screenings).
The festival had an excessive amount of films and exhibitions in the line-up. To the festival’s credit, the line up normally includes a diverse selection of countries, genres and mediums, plus repertory screenings that I usually seek out more than the newer films.
But lately I’ve been thinking about how overabdundance at film festivals and art biennales dilute the festival experience, making it feel less collective and more individualistic. Speaking to different people during my time in Rotterdam made me realise how we all are experiencing our own version of the festival and not finding much common ground to talk or think about the same films we watched. Too much of everything can feel like nothing. Additionally, an overstuffed film festival line-up usually reflects a selection process that is not rigorous, just a case of bundling as many films as possible.
I know all of this sounds extremely “first world problem”. Perhaps IFFR is the type of festival you attend knowing in advance what you really want to see instead of ‘discovering’ films, because it ends up relying on luck and leading to more misses than hits. That’s at least how I approached this year’s addition, like I did in 2023.
One section that sounded essential to me was Focus: Through Cinema We Shall Rise!.
2025 marks the 70th anniversary of the historic Afro-Asian Conference held in Bandung, Indonesia, where 29 nations gathered to discuss economic and political unity, igniting the concept of what is now known as the Global South. The event also inspired the Afro-Asian Film Festival, held three times: in Tashkent (1958), Cairo (1960) and Jakarta (1964), which laid the groundwork for a film culture of resistance and reform. Featuring a selection of films from these three festivals and a world premiere inspired by them and the ‘Bandung spirit’, along with panels and discussions, IFFR will explore their legacy and their relevance today, reinforcing IFFR’s commitment to unearthing the stories of the colonised and dispossessed.
This section featured 14 films and a panel talk, but I was only able to watch one, The Open Door (Henry Barakat, 1963). I couldn’t watch more, mainly because the over-packed schedule didn’t allow me to fit as many as I wanted each day.
An Egyptian coming of age feminist melodrama starring Faten Hamama, based on a novel by Latifa al-Zayyat with the same title.
Set between 1952 and 1967 in a society rife with political apathy, patriarchy and hypocrisy - Laila (Faten Hamama) is seeking personal and political liberation, trying to understand her role as a woman contributing to society, and her relationships with men - an authoritarian father, her first love who sexually assaults her, her professor who she gets engaged to, only to break it off after realising he has deeply conservative views and the likelihood of holding her back from her own ambitions.
Amidst key political events like the anti-colonial and anti-monarch protests, the Egyptian Revolution and Cairo Fire (1952), Suez Crisis (1956), Six-Day War (1967), Laila can only find common grounds with her brother and his friend, the two people who share her political and social ideals, and eventually finding agency and courage to follow her own beliefs and desires and the man she wants to be with. She even manages to tell her father not to get in her way. When he reacts asking her if she’s gone crazy, she replies “No', I’ve come to my senses.”
A triumphant ending showing Laila finally knows what she wants and goes after it. Instead of النهاية (The End), we see إلى القاء (Till we meet again) on the screen.
Despite the melodrama, and a 32 year old Faten Hamama acting as a teenager, college student and young woman, the film’s depiction of a female sexual and political awakening is very much lacking in contemporary commercial Egyptian cinema. Understanding and navigating the political, cultural and societal expectations are (sadly) relevant today as they were in the 1960s.
Seeing this film in Rotterdam was a rare opportunity to watch classic Egyptian cinema on a big screen. More Sunday mornings should be spent watching films starring Faten Hamama in a cinema.
(There’s a good round up about Through Cinema We Shall Rise! program on Film Comment, IFFR 2025: Another World by Devika Girish.)
Focus: Hold Video in Your Hands was another section I was very curious about.
From the 1980s until their decline in the 2010s, video shops were crucial arenas for film culture. For the world premieres of Alex Ross Perry's Videoheaven and Rotterdam artist Gyz La Rivière's Videotheek Marco, we invite the IFFR audience to rediscover the various cultures that grew out of video shops – some in the cinema, and some in a special space where locals and festival guests alike will be able to screen their VHS treasures!
There were 29 events in this section including screenings, talks and workshops, but I was only able to watch two films, Be Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry, 2008) and Tausend Augen (Hans-Christoph Blumenberg, 1984) - both on 35mm.
I was not aware of Be Kind Rewind before and found it to be a charming and moving film about community fighting to preserve a VHS store from being demolished by property developers. It is also about making low budget films, the joy of creating, sharing and bringing people together.
Growing up watching films on VHS and recording music videos and shows from television, I wish I was able to see more from this programme. I imagine a standalone retrospective outside a film festival would be a hit.
As for the newer films, I watched 4 that did the festival rounds last year:
Beating Hearts / L’amour ouf (Gilles Lellouche)
The Count of Monte Cristo (Matthieu Delaporte, Alexandre de La Patellière)
Hard Truths (Mike Leigh)
I’m Still Here (Walter Salles) - this for me was the standout, utterly crushing.
As for films that premiered at IFFR, I watched Ariel (Lois Patiño), described as a reinterpretation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest set in the tranquil Azores islands where its inhabitants are in perpetual Shakespearian character.
The lines are blurred between what is real or imagined - or is it all one big dream? I thought of David Lynch quite a few times during the screening. I didn’t find it as transfixing as Patiño’s previous film, Samsra, but there’s enough existentialism mixed with a little playfulness and mesmerising seascapes that made me like it and would be happy to watch it again.
I had a phase during my 20s where I was obsessed with dolphins. It might have started when I watched Luc Besson’s The Big Blue. I still have most of my old dolphin figurines and other dolphin related ephemera.
I was not aware how the American neuroscientist John C. Lilly (1915-2001) had a role in influencing our strong affections towards dolphins and whales. He dedicated his life researching human consciousness and communicating with dolphins using non-traditional research and experimentation methods including injecting dolphins with LSD, living with dolphins in a house flooded with water to monitor them all day.
John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office (Courtney Stephens, Michael Almereyda) includes archival footage about John C. Lilly and present-day interviews with some of his peers. The film is narrated by Chloë Sevigny. I learned how his pursuit of science included mysticism and trying to understand and reach a higher state of consciousness. His work also inspired pop-culture, including films like The Day of the Dolphin (Mike Nichols, 1973), Altered States (Ken Russell, 1980), Ecco the Dolphin video game. And most probably Luc Besson.
Last November, I screened another film by Courtney Stephens - Terra Femme, a film made entirely of amateur travelogues filmed by women in the 1920s-1950s and narrated by her. A contemplative and reflective film about the female gaze, time, colonialism and liberty. The last Michael Almereyda film I watched was Tesla in 2020, about the engineer and inventor Nikola Tesla starring Ethan Hawkes, that is far from a traditional biopic, it is playful and almost experimental compared to the usual traditional biopics made in America and elsewhere. Two very different films, but both looking into the past and linking them to relevant present day questions and the human condition.
John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office combines two different approaches to filmmaking, making it an overall thoughtful and insightful film about a specific history of American counterculture.
Today, the visionaries we are exposed to in the media are investors and tech bros who are hungry for money, want to control our data and shaping what we are exposed to on social media.
Learning about John Lilly, a visionary seeking another realm and interspecies communication sounds wondrous, but it is from a long lost era. Today, there’s no room for scientific research and discovery that doesn’t lead to quick profits.
I was only able to attend one short film programme - Familiar Ecologies featuring 6 shorts films about the natural world.
My favourites were Baħar Biss / Just Sea (Franziska von Stenglin), a 25 min film shot on the island of Gozo in Malta about the daily routine of a fisherman who laments the loss of traditions, the negative effects of progress that has impacted nature, traditional fishing methods and the lack of food resource from the sea because of industrial fishing. “What’s gone is gone.”
The film was originally commissioned for the first Malta Bienniale and glad I had an opportunity to see it at the festival.
Other highlights:
- Hanging out with my film festival buddy Matt Mansfield. You can read about his IFFR experience here.
- Meeting having a conversation with Vadim Rizov from Filmmaker Magazine (after following and reading his work for many years). You can read his IFFR review here.
- Meeting and talking with Courtney Stephens in person after communicating with her online since I screened Terra Femme.
- Talking with Franziska von Stenglin after first meeting her in Berlin in 2022.
It’s great to be able to spend time at film festivals talking with people who are on your same wavelength.
A couple of days before I left, I learned that Cinerama, one of the festival cinema venues is under threat.
via Deadline:
(Festival director) Kaludjercic’s opening night speech…requested the festival’s audience to pay attention to the ongoing petition for Cinerama to be preserved for the local community. Cinerama is one of the city’s theaters also used as a venue for IFFR.
The current lease for Cinerama will run out by end-2025 and the petition seeks the “municipality of Rotterdam to prevent the demolition of Cinerama for a new construction project.” The online petition has amassed nearly 30,000 signatures.
“Cinerama is not only a cinema, but also a communal space for the citizens of Rotterdam. It has become a space that needs and deserves to be protected and preserved,” said Kaludjercic. Her speech was met with cheers and rapturous applause from the audience.
The above photos are by me. It’s one of my favourite cinemas in Rotterdam, I hope it will be saved.
Everything I watched:
Harbour
Ariel (Lois Patino)
And The Rest Will Follow (Pelin Esmer)
John Lilly and the Earth Coincidence Control Office (Courtney Stephens, Michael Almereyda)
Where the Wind Comes From (Amel Guellaty)
Limelight
Beating Hearts / L’amour ouf (Gilles Lellouche)
The Count of Monte Cristo (Matthieu Delaporte, Alexandre de La Patellière)
Hard Truths (Mike Leigh)
I’m Still Here (Walter Salles)
Short & Mid Length - Familiar Ecologies Programme
A Light Unseen (James Sansing)
A Patriot of These Woods (Karel Doing)
Ghost Protists (Sasha Woods)
A Thousand Waves Away (Helena Wittman)
This Is Not Your Garden (Carlos Velandia)
Bahar Biss / Just Sea (Franziska von Stenglin)
Focus: Through Cinema We Shall Rise
The Open Door (Henry Barakat, 1963)
Focus: Hold Video in Your Hands
Be Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry, 2008, 35mm)
Tausend Augen (Hans-Christoph Blumenberg, 1984, 35mm)
Cinema Regained
Katha (Sai Paranjpye, 1983)
La nott’e’l giorno / Night ’n’ Day (Gianni Castagnoli, 1976, 16mm)
Notre Dame de la Croisette (Daniel Schmid, 1981)
Itinerary of Jean Bricard (Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub, 2007)
The Red Badge of Courage (John Huston, 1951, 35mm)