After two editions decimated by the pandemic and forced in front of a monitor, finally the Rotterdam Film Festival and its no longer so new director Vanja Kaludjercic are back in attendance to present a varied program that also pays attention to our cinema.
The major winter film festivals were hit hardest by the pandemic, further disadvantaged by the ideal climatic conditions for the spread of the virus. For them this 2023 will finally mark the return in full style in presencestarting fromInternational Film Festival Rotterdam which opened on January 25th and will continue until February 5th. Chance finally for the director Vanja Kaludjercicin charge since the fateful 2020, to present the traditionally very passionate public of the Dutch city a more versatile program than usual.
There is of course room for discovery cinema, a competition (the Tiger Competition) with 16 titles vying for the Tiger Award, judged by a panel chaired by the cult Filipino author Lav Diaz and composed, among others, also by Sabrina Baracetti, historic soul of the crucial Far East Film Fest. As Kaludjercic told Screen International, “we don’t like to distinguish much between cinematic art that happens on the big screen and outside, in a gallery or somewhere else”. Hence the presence as guest of honor of Steve McQueenalways moving between cinema and visual arts, which has been commissioned a work that is exhibited for the occasion.
The opening of the festival featured the Norwegian biopic Munchdirected by Henrik Martin Dahlsbakkenon the life of the famous painter for The screamwhich presented a particular choice, à la I’m not here the Haynes’s Bob Dylan, by having different actors interpret the artist, in order to represent his various personalities and multiple talents, in different moments of his life. A cross-section of one of the most significant visual artists active between the 19th and 20th centuries, especially considering how his masterpiece is The screamhas become a kind of Nordic icon of the subconscious of the last century, symbol like a few of fear and desperate loneliness. What few of us probably knew (and the movie shows) is how Munch was a free thinker, anarchist, sexual adventurer and many other things.
An artist, and also a Nordic one, nothing better to open twelve days of screenings here in the most innovative Dutch city, completely destroyed during the Second World War and then condemned to continually regenerate, at the forefront of design, architecture, respect for the environment and much more. A festival, that of Rotterdam, which has been presenting since the very first days rooms all sold out and a renewed focus on the Italian cinema. There will be films by great authors from our area, curiously never invited from parts of the most important port in Europe, such as Mark Bellocchio per Night exterior e Mario Martone per Nostalgia. Full house for all screenings (even future ones), just as it was much appreciated (and invited) by the director The strangeness Of Roberto wentjust landed here to present it.
In the section Harbour the debut of Lyda Patitucci, Like sheep among wolvesa hard crime with an unprecedented twist Isabella Ragonese together with Andrew Archangels. Written by Philip Gravino and produced by Matthew Oak for Greenland, the film is the first work by Patitucci, already director of some episodes of the Netflix series, Curonand second unit in I stop when I want, The first king e Fast as the wind. But we will return to this film in the next few days.
