One of the few major festivals to have taken place physically in the first three months of 2020, before others were forced to abandon or adapt their programs in the year’s long back half, the International Film Festival Rotterdam has reimagined its structure for 2021 in celebration of the festival’s 50th anniversary, which also unfortunately doubles as the first anniversary of the COVID-19 outbreak. The first festival under new artistic director Vanja Kaludjercic, this anniversary edition featured a mix of temporary and permanent adjustments, the most significant of the former being a split in this year’s presentation between a reduced February program and a second installment in June, the month of the festival’s original presentation in 1972. The June edition will feature the festival’s Bright Future section (reduced in scale and newly non-competitive) alongside the vaguely defined Harbour program, its name a nod to both the importance of Rotterdam’s port and IFFR’s self-description as a “safe haven” for ambitious cinema.
Now taking place exclusively online, after the Dutch government’s introduction of new lockdown orders in early January scuttled plans for a hybrid virtual/in-cinema festival, the IFFR’s refreshingly manageable February edition hosted the Limelight program of bigger arthouse titles slated for domestic distribution, as—a fantastical, Oedipus-inspired, vignette-structured narrative about a young woman’s journey of self-discovery around Tibet—China’s three-year winning streak in the competition came to an end when the jury opted to honour first-time Tamil director Vinothraj P.S.’ , another reimagined road movie set in southern India’s Tamil Nadu state.
