International Film Festival Rotterdam

Celebrating the world of cinema through compilations, retrospectives, restored classics and more. Our section where film art is explored in all its variety.

Deep Focus includes the following programmes:

• Frameworks
• Signatures
• Regained
• Retrospectives
• Deep Focus Short

Here are the first programme hints and confirmed films for Deep Focus.

Signatures 
In Signatures we present new work by established makers, auteurs and festival veterans. Yervant Gianikian’s I diari di Angela – Noi due cineasti will feature as part of this programme for IFFR 2019 for example. Past years brought films such as Insect by Jan Švankmajer, La Flor (Parte 1) by Mariano Llinás, and Lav Diaz’s The Woman Who Left.

Frameworks
Launched last year, this programme invites major voices from the art world to show their work to an international film audience. We also ask these names to introduce a young and emerging artist of their choice, whom we call their ‘Acolyte’. Last year, Apichatpong Weerasethakul introduced Thai filmmaker Mont Tesprateep, and Alfredo Jaar’s Acolyte was the Portuguese artist Grada Kilomba.

Regained 
Regained is all about casting new light on existing film material by means of restored classics, films about film, experimental works and installations. In 2018, for example, we showed a selection of films by Dutch experimental film pioneer Frans Zwartjes, who had recently passed away.

Retrospectives
Here we present extensive retrospectives and the filmmaker’s oeuvre. Last year we dove into the work of Argentinian filmmaker José Campusano and Polish artist Artur Żmijewski.