The International Film Festival Rotterdam has always been something of a grab bag. This year, at the 53rd edition, the Dutch festival showed 424 films across its various programmes — a reduction from past years due to widespread budget cuts. Still, 424 films (including 183 world premieres) is a mammoth undertaking for any one film critic at a major festival lacking an intuitive method of whittling down a schedule. This is especially true for international press less interested in the trickle-down from Cannes or Venice — Agniezka Holland’s audience award-winner Green Border, Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast, and Alice Rohrwacher’s La […]
by Beatrice Loayza on Feb 19, 2024Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich isn’t interested in convention. The 33-year-old filmmaker blends narrative and documentary elements to create surrealist interpretations of Black history and experiences—stories underrepresented in the Western film canon despite the continuous presence of Black filmmakers since cinema’s inception. “The thing that film needs to ask itself is if it’s interested in continuing to evolve,” says Hunt-Ehrlich. “If it doesn’t grow, it’s going to be left behind.” Whether or not the broader cinematic landscape is ready to change, Hunt-Ehrlich is honing her own distinctive approach to the dramatization of Black stories, one that values opacity and abstraction over linear narrative. […]
by Vadim Rizov on Oct 19, 2020