Globe-spotting.

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM

ROTTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

JANUARY 23-FEBRUARY 3, 2008

Come festival time, Rotterdam presents itself as ferociously hungry for international movies, an image underscored by the ubiquitous and iconic tiger logo of the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). Since the city largely shutters up its shops by dusk and there was no time for meals between viewings and interviews, I was often literally sustained by the kind of rare transcendent premiere moments for which the risk-taking IFFR is (in)famous. As one of a sprinkle of critics still in the house when the lights came up, I was crankily frustrated by the insular indulgences of the auto-digi-doc Years When I Was a Child Outside (2008), a Tiger Awards competitor directed by John Torres, but fortified by substantial work by another Filipino filmmaker, Khavn (a Renaissance man who incidentally scored Torres's film). Two years before at IFFR, Khavn promoted his no-budget, clever-but-messy films and bad-boy persona. This year viewers were gifted with the sometimes silly, but always sharply observed feature Philippine Bliss (2008). Credited as always as "This is not a film by Khavn," the film is set in a housing project populated by true characters and situations that are both neo-real and absurd.

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Asian cinema was well-represented throughout IFFR with films from Southeast, East, South (including a whole strand of Hinglish Indian and Indian diaspora movies), and Central Asia (an intriguing Kazakh film by Abai Kulbai from 2007, Strizh, was one of these). Southeast Asian directors took home two out of three of this year's Tiger Awards for first or second features. Liew Seng Tat's excellent Malaysian family drama Flower in the Pocket (2008) was recognized as were Thai director Aditya Assarat's Wonderful Town (2008) and Danish filmmaker Omar Shargawi's Go With Peace Jamil (2008).

In the Sturm and Drang (established directors) and Rotterdammerung (hybrid shockers) film categories, there were recent films from Thai auteurs Pen-ek Ratanaruang and Wisit Sasanatieng. The satisfyingly uncensored version of Ratanaruang's Ploy (2008), a dreamy marriage crisis/erotic thriller, was blessed by the welcome return of a previous Pen-ek collaborator, Lalita Panyopas, in a lead role. However, Sasanatieg's ghost story, The Unseeable (2008), is a disappointingly mannered and conventional genre foray by the formerly wildly inventive director of Tears of the Black Tiger (2002) and Citizen Dog (2006). Singaporean sensation Royston Tan picked up the camp slack with flashy song-and-dance numbers, not to mention chicken jokes, in the Hokkien-dialect musical 881 (2008), his domestic box-office smash. Among the Mid-East selections, Iran and Turkey had a handful of films apiece: the star-crossed cross-ethnic romances Hafez (2008, by Abofazl Jalili) and My Marlon and Brando (2006, by Huseyin Karabey) deserve a mention. The Iran-themed Oscar-nominated animation Persepolis (2008, by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnard) took the audience award.

Two accomplished IFFR first features were impressive in terms of nuanced details and seemingly unlikely juxtaposition of international locations and authorial provenance. Marrakech Inshallah (2008), a tale of two Moroccan brothers, was written and directed by Boston brothers Stephen Fisker Pierce and Christian Pierce. The post-genocide Rwanda-set Liberation Day (2007, by Korean American filmmaker Lee Isaac Chung), a largely improvised study of friendship and family centered around an uneasy homecoming, is the first feature ever made in the Kinyarwanda language.

Although an impressive array of films from the Americas were presented, TFFR 2008 fared miserably in terms of sub-Saharan African programming. Only the tiniest sample of films from the region included the Kenyan/South African short Ras Star (2008, by Wanuri Kahiu) and the world premiere of South African filmmaker Darrell James Roodt's Zimbabwe (2008). A welcome sight on the program was a new print of Lionel Rogosin's 1960 classic apartheid clocudrama, Come Back Africa, and Stephanie Black's latest, Africa Unite (2008), a concert film chronicling the Bob Marley sixtieth birthday bash in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 2005.

This year IFFR was rich with documentaries, including Recycle (2007, by Mahmoud al Massad) which followed its prize-winning debut (for best cinematography) at the Sundance Film Festival. Directed by Netherlands-based Palestinian Jordanian filmmaker Mahmoud al Massad, Recycle visits Al Qaeda mastermind Zarqawi's hometown and profiles a former mujahideen fighter. A second Iraqi film War, Love, God and Madness (2008) is a stunning making-of documentary of Iraqiborn Mohamed Al Daradji's Baghdad-set feature Ahlaam (2005). Also from Iraq, Oday Salah's One Day in Khadimiya Prison for Women (2008) offers a rare and fascinating glimpse behind the walls of the prison.

Despite this array of filmgoing experience, my most vivid film memory of the 37th IFFR is the global city as backdrop, appropriate as, once again, I barely glimpsed Rotterdam while scuttling from venue to venue. The cine-trope seems fitting this year because festival standout My Palestine (a.k.a. To Each His Palestine/Chacun sa Palestine, 2006), a Franco-Lebanese co-production by Nadine Naous and Lena Rouxel, asks each of its interview subjects to choose an iconic city image for a portrait shot (Jerusalem, Beirut, Paris, New York City), a request that is all the more poignant as each of these candid, young men and women are Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

ANNE CIECKO is an associate professor of international cinema in the Department of Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.