À l’ouest de Pluton, Henri Bernadet, Myriam Verreault, Canada
Be Calm and Count to Seven, Ramtin Lavafipour, Iran

Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly, Edwin, Indonesië

Breathless, Yang Ik-June, Zuid-Korea
The Dark Harbour,
Naito Takatsugu, Japan
Dogging: A Love Story, Simon Ellis, Verenigd Koninkrijk
Floating in Memory, Peng Tao, China
The Hungry Ghosts, Michael Imperioli,
Verenigde Staten

No puedo vivir sin ti, Leon Dai, Taiwan

Schottentor, Caspar Pfaundler, Oostenrijk
Sois sage, Juliette Garcias, Frankrijk/Denemarken
The Strength of Water, Armagan Ballantyne,
Nieuw-Zeeland/Duitsland
Turistas, Alicia Scherson, Chili
Wrong Rosary, Mahmut Fazil Coskun, Turkije

As a foreign and first time visitor of the Festival  I am a little modest in my own comment, but I hear around me a lot of negative comments of Festival ” tigers” – package holders like me with 30 or more tickets – , especially about the changed policy for the Visa Room Elgin screenings. Though I can not compare the difference with other years, I find the prices of the Elgin screenings ridiculous. Maybe I will blog later over simularities and differences between Toronto and Rotterdam, another big ” public oriented” Festival.

(photo: international film festival rotterdam)

It was a nice festival, only a few disappointments, good quality, though not much sky-high. 39 movies watched, My top 5:

• Import/Export, especially the impressing scenes in the elderly, demented people place
• Le voyage du ballon rouge
• Alexandra
• Secrete Sunshine, with a wonderful role of Do-yeon Jeon
• Cargo 200, despite some gruesome scenes

Still to be seen:

• I’m not there
• No country for old men
• Stellet Licht
• La graine et le mullet
• You, the living
• Tricks
• Flower in the pocket (when possible)
• Margot at the wedding
• The Darjeeling Limited
• The band’s visit

Oeps, that’s a lot…

•  The King of Ping Pong,  a swedish adoscolent movie in the very, very North of the country, nothing is as it looks;
• Wonderful town, a love drama in South Thailand Tsunami area;
• Cordero de Dios (Lamb of Gods), about the country’s traumatic recent history in middleclass families;

• Alexandra, a masterpiece of Alexandr Sukurov, very realistic about the madness of (Chechnian) war, without even one gunshot, with a classic role of Galina Vishnevskaya, operastar and the wife of the late cellist Rostropovich;
• Help me Eros, in the madness of Taipeh (Taiwan), when a bankrupt man freaks out completely in a world of sex and design, an I can assure you that the Animal’s Party in Taiwan does not have a member of parliament ;
• The Mourning Forest; I always liked forests, as i grown up in the (green) East of my country and this forest looks like the Mother of all Forests; also touching about the power of elderness;
• Bashing (2005), a terrifying story about mass hysteria, from Filmmaker in Focus Kobayashi Masahiro;
• Hemel boven Holland, based on the story of Mohammed B., who killed Theo van Gogh, a first appearance of dutch filmmaker Rolf van Eijk, with a beautiful – strange word in this context – play of leading actor Sabir Al Haft;