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International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) will debut 14 feature works in its main competition and host on-stage talks with Cate Blanchett and Cheryl Dunye during its upcoming 54th edition, which runs 30 January – 9 February 2025.

The festival announced its competition lineups and talks this morning during a presser.

IFFR’s main Tiger Competition comes with a €40,000 cash prize. The festival also hands out two Special Jury Awards worth €10,000 each. The films selected this year include Im Haus meiner Eltern by Tim Ellric, Bad Girl by Varsha Bharath, and Guo Ran by Li Dongmei. Scroll down for the full list of titles. The Tiger Competition Jury will feature Yuki Aditya, Soheila Golestani, Winnie Lau, Peter Strickland, and Andrea Luka Zimmerman.

The headline guests of the festival’s talks lineup are Cate Blanchett and Guy Maddin, who will discuss their collaboration on Rumours. Also set for discussions in Rotterdam are DoP Lol Crawley and American...

The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) unveiled its 2025 Big Screen and Tiger Short competitive sections on Tuesday. Typical for Rotterdam, the selection is truly global, with films traversing from Montenegro to Malaysia, and from Congo to India.

The Big Screen Competition, which features films that bridge arthouse and popular cinema, features highlights including The Assistant from Polish directors Anka and Wilhelm Sasnal, whose It Looks Pretty from a Distance was in Rotterdam’s Tiger competition in 2012, Albert Oehlen’s Bad Painter starring Udo Kier, and the Japanese drama Yasuko, Songs of Days Past from director Negishi Kichitaro.

Oscar-winner Cate Blanchett and Canadian avant-garde filmmaker Guy Maddin will attend IFFR 2025 as part of the festival’s IFFR Talks lineup, to discuss their recent collaboration on Maddin’s Rumours. Other IFFR talks include a conversation with The Brutalist cinematographer Lol Crawley — winner of the IFFR’s Robby Müller lifetime achievement award — and...

This year’s edition of the Berlin Film Festival has come to an end, and Nadav Lapid’s “Synonyms” is taking home one of the film world’s most prestigious awards: the Golden Bear for Best Film. “I Was at Home, But” helmer Angela Schanelec was awarded the Silver Bear for Best Director by the jury, which was led by Juliette Binoche and gave both acting prizes to the stars of Wang Xiaoshuai’s “Di jui tian chang”.

The full list of winners:

Read More: ‘Synonyms’ Review: An Astonishing, Maddening Drama About National Identity — Berlin

Golden Bear for Best Film: “Synonyms,” directed by Nadav Lapid

Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize: “Grâce à Dieu” (“By the Grace of God”), directed by François Ozon

Silver Bear Alfred Bauer Prize: “Systemsprenger” (“System Crasher”), directed by Nora Fingscheidt

Silver Bear for Best Director: Angela Schanelec, “Ich war zuhause, aber” “(I Was at Home, But...

Israeli director Nadav Lapid’s “Synonyms,” about a young Israeli man in Paris who has turned his back on his native country, won the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlinale on Saturday.

The Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize went to François Ozon’s French drama “By the Grace of God,” a fact-based account of the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal behind the ongoing trial of Philippe Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon.

Accepting the award, Lapid said “Synonyms,” which stars Tom Mercier, would likely be considered “scandalous” in Israel and France – the pic skewers stereotypes from both nations – but added that it was ultimately a celebration.

In his review in Variety, Jay Weissberg wrote that the film takes “a Kalashnikov to the nation’s military culture and its carefully nurtured persecution complex.”

Thanking the Berlinale for selecting his film, Ozon said he did not know whether addressing child sexual abuse...