IFFR 50 (Feb 1-7, 2021)

Er is een geest van mij

Mateo Vega

<p>An attempt at mourning both personal and political futures that never arrived, organised around a broad interpretation of the trope of the ghost. We see depersonalised figures, urban ruins, consuming fires and microscopic images of decaying bodily matter; footage was shot in Washington DC, Lima and Amsterdam. Issues like failed neoliberal promises of progress, the rise of fascism, and self-image and adulthood are brought together, set to a poem that shifts between Spanish and Dutch.</p>

Mùa xuân vĩnh cửu (The Eternal Springtime)

Việt Vũ

<p>In a landscape on the brink of extinction, a son and mother trek into a native cave to be revitalized. By just quietly sitting together in their humble shelter, a loving energy is shared through these two human beings&rsquo; naked bodies. This personal portrait cuts deep into the vulnerable present of an ex-colonised nation transiting into the digital age. Seen from a first-person perspective, the film also explores a new possibility of storytelling.</p>

For the Sake of Calmness

Newsha Tavakolian

<p>How does one visualise an amorphous idea, one that has become abstract to the point of obscurity? Landscape, real and imagined, provides the backdrop for a visual narrative, while sound, intertwined with a self-narrated monologue, adds a third dimension to this specific portrayal. Newsha Tavakolian is detached from the real world and yet achingly affected by it. An experimental take on a reality intensified by the emotional flare of PMS (Premenstrual Syndrome).</p>

Letter from your Far-Off Country

Suneil Sanzgiri

<p>In this film shot on 16mm, Sanzgiri traces lines and lineages of ancestral memory, poetry and his history. A search for solidarity in the sounds and colours of a spontaneous movement in Delhi led by Muslim women, an Iqbal Bano song, images of B.R. Ambedkar &ndash; a radical anti-caste Dalit intellectual &ndash; all revolving around a letter addressed to a distant relative. Seeking to reclaim the past from erasure, and provide a journey towards a potential future.</p>

Luces del desierto (Desert Lights)

Félix Blume

<p>Strange lights appear at night in the Mexican desert &ndash; it seems to be full of life. The residents tell us what they&rsquo;ve seen: a fireball, lights flying, lightning falling from the sky, a flash. The singularity of each experience builds a complete story narrated by a choir of people. This suspenseful film invites us to open our eyes wide in the twilight, and listen to the sounds hidden in the darkness.</p>

Surviving You, Always

Morgan Quaintance

<p>A voice-over by American psychologist Timothy Leary professes that psychedelic drugs trigger the expansion of consciousness. Meanwhile, the subtitles we read tell us about a teenager from 1990s South London who spends acid-infused weekends with a friend. Following both perspectives simultaneously is a mind-twisting exercise, but Morgan Quaintance&rsquo;s seamless editing evokes that firm feeling when a connection is established between two people. But just like hallucinations, teenage friendships feel like they&rsquo;ll last forever but rarely do.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

Tellurian Drama

Riar Rizaldi

<p>Mount Malabar in West Java, Indonesia, shows us a spectrum of human-nature relationships: the Dutch colonial government saw the mountain as a suitable spot for an antenna for radio transmission; for indigenous communities, the mountain itself is a partner for spiritual communication. In Riar Rizaldi&rsquo;s eclectic essay film, archival history collides with personal narratives on the history of technology, nature and colonization. A shaman&rsquo;s breath-taking zither performance brings us a moment of clarity.</p>

Who Is Afraid of Ideology? Part 3 Micro Resistances

Marwa Arsanios

<p>Marwa Arsanios&rsquo; trilogy&nbsp;<em>Who Is Afraid of Ideology?&nbsp;</em>weaves an intersectional path through the struggles of women &minus; in places such as Northern Syria and Colombia &minus; to claim the right to the land and to reconnect with nature in an unmediated way.&nbsp;<em>Part 3 Micro Resistancies</em><strong>&nbsp;</strong>takes place in Tolimo, and focuses on the ongoing systemic war waged by transnational corporations against the smallest and the most essential element of life &minus; the seed.&nbsp;<em>(&Ouml;v&uuml;l &Ouml;. Durmusoglu)</em></p>

Archipelago

Félix Dufour-Laperrière

<p>Evocative animation brings the landscape to life in this experimental exploration of the historic Saint Lawrence River and its famous thousand islands. Fluidly superimposed images mingle with performed dialogue to navigate the boundaries of cinema.</p>

Carro Rei (King Car)

Renata Pinheiro

<p>A taxi company owner&rsquo;s son has an extraordinary connection with cars: he can talk to them. He makes friends with the car that saved him from a traffic accident as a child, but he also hears the old wrecks complain about the law banning cars over 15 years old from the roads. Together with his uncle, he converts the write-offs into futuristic vehicles that are conscious and speak. They then take on the status quo under King Car&rsquo;s banner. However, capitalism&rsquo;s zombies prove more evil than expected.</p>

The Last Farmer (Kadaisi vivasayi)

M. Manikandan

<p>Octogenarian Maayandi is the last active farmer in his remote village in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. His farm work, his fields and livestock are enough for him, and he refuses to sell his land to a property developer. But Maayandi&rsquo;s pleasantly predictable way of life comes to an abrupt end when he is wrongly accused of killing three peacocks &ndash; the national symbol of India &ndash; and burying them on his property.</p>

Lone Wolf

Jonathan Ogilvie

<p><em>Lone Wolf&nbsp;</em>relocates a classic book by Joseph Conrad to a near-future Australia where every aspect of daily life can be spied on by the government. The focus here is on an obscure bookstore where a group of environmental activists are meeting in secret. Idealistic Winnie and her boyfriend Conrad want to disrupt the G20, but aren&rsquo;t aware that they are possibly being lured into a trap.</p> <p>The main question remains long unanswered: why does the minister need to see this footage? Director Jonathan Ogilvie cleverly builds up to the answer. Its sharp dialogue and smart camerawork make&nbsp;<em>Lone Wolf&nbsp;</em>both an exciting political thriller and an emotion-laden drama.</p>

Mandibules

Quentin Dupieux

<p>Two easily distracted layabouts find a Labrador-sized fly in this new film from master absurdist Dupieux.</p>

earthearthearth

Daïchi Saïto

<p>Dawn breaks where land is flesh And bones&rsquo; echoes; You&rsquo;ve lived through extinctions &ndash; Stars, skies, sand and seas; Future is catching us up at last, And all the dead are ahead of us.</p> <p>An experimental Japanese filmmaker based in Montreal, where he co-founded the Double Negative Collective, Da&iuml;chi Sa&iuml;to was one of the three artists invited by the Canadian curator Oona Mosna to film in the Andean mountains as part of the Underground Mines Program, which has already given birth to Malena Szlam&rsquo;s Altiplano (Cin&eacute;ma du r&eacute;el 2019). No less sumptuous, earthearthearth adopts a very different formal strategy, preferring the static majesty of the landscapes in 35 mm to their geological particularities. It took five years for the film to emerge from the secrets and contingencies of his photochemical work. This points up the prudence that the idea of landscape inspires in the filmmaker, as well has his curiosity for what it hides and the feelings it kindles, his reticence to simply represent its beauty, which he instead integrates into the very substance of the celluloid film. Sa&iuml;to lays claim to the haptic planeness of the image, where mountain summits divide vibrant masses. The images are like pieces taken from the rock and lengthily subjected to chemical processes similar to those that erode the land. As in Engram of Returning (2015), the images are offered up to the structural improvisation of saxophonist Jason Sharp &ndash; who uses the rhythm of his heart beat and acts on this through a circular breathing technique &ndash; and form an impressive hypnotic meditation on the instability of matter, the future of the earth and the need to think about how things interrelate.</p> <p>- Antoine Thirion</p>

Terranova

Alejandro Pérez Serrano Alejandro Alonso Estrella

<p>Cities do not repeat themselves; they transmute. Some cities are created by philosophical ideas. The lively city portrayed in&nbsp;<strong>Terranova</strong>&nbsp;is made of reflections, memories of other cities, and visions of the future. It has a certain solemnity in its soundscape, without losing those strong sounds that make it unique. This particular universe that has been brought together contains many magical scenes that are filmed through a camera obscura.</p>