IFFR 2026: First Cinema Regained Titles Announced

International Film Festival Rotterdam has unveiled its first selections for Cinema Regained, IFFR’s realm for rethinking film history, which will once again present recent restorations and works that offer new perspectives on cinema’s past.  Celebrating their world premieres at IFFR 2026 as part of the Cinema Regained programme will be Hungarian avant-garde master Péter Lichter’s The Thing in the Coffin (2026)—an appropriated footage version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula—and Ryan A. White and A.P. Pickle’s doc Mickey & Richard (2026).

Among the restorations featured, audiences will discover Tracing to Expo '70 (1970)—a dazzling mix of musical, travelogue and mystery, which looks at the first World Exposition held in Asia—and Gerald Potterton’s Tiki Tiki (1971), a crazy meta-movie featuring animated monkeys making a live-action Soviet-style fantasy epic.  Additional restorations will come from Brazil, Mexico and the Czech Republic, while further attempts at making new sense of film history will be provided by directors from Germany, France and Italy.

Vanja Kaludjercic, Festival Director at IFFR, said: "Cinema Regained reflects the way IFFR approaches cinema: by returning to works and histories that deserve a more attentive place in the conversation.  Cinema Regained continues to open up new ways of reading the past, presenting restorations, archival discoveries and experiments that shift how we understand film history.  This programme offers audiences a perspective that is informed, curious and grounded in the belief that cinema’s past remains essential to how we read the present".

Source/images: IFFR

The Ice Tower (Lucile Hadžihalilović, 2025)

Given that her career spans nearly 40 years, it is hard to believe that, prior to her remarkable new film The Ice Tower, Lucile Hadžihalilović had made just three feature films: Innocence (2004), Evolution (2015), and Earwig (2021).  In their respective years, all of these excellent Belgian co-productions played at the London Film Festival, and her latest film continued this trend with two screenings at the 2025 LFF.  But four features do not tell the whole story: in addition to making a few shorts, Hadžihalilović has produced several films directed by her partner and frequent collaborator Gaspar Noé—who has a notable acting role in The Ice Tower—including Lux Æterna, Vortex, and I Stand Alone, the last of which she also edited.

Earlier this year, the 70s-set The Ice Tower played as one of the silent screenings at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival, which Hadžihalilović attended 20 years after Innocence was selected for the same event.  While the latter film has often been described as a dark fairy tale, Hadžihalilović’s latest effort is more directly inspired by the work of the master of the genre, Hans Christian Andersen.  As with all of her previous features, The Ice Tower focuses firmly on children, following runaway orphan Jeanne (Clara Pacini), who takes shelter in a film studio where an adaptation of Andersen’s 1844 short story "The Snow Queen"—starring the haughty Cristina (Marion Cotillard) in the title role—is in production.

Jeanne is fascinated by both the fairy story and the lead actress, and once the teenager’s presence in the studio becomes known, Cristina begins to reciprocate her attention.  It is by no means a symmetrical relationship—as one might expect, the imperious Cristina clearly calls the shots—but the two develop a strange bond as the film shoot progresses (a bewigged Noé is good value as the slightly seedy director of the film-within-the-film).  Just as Cristina is inhabiting a role, Jeanne—thanks to a stolen ID—also adopts a persona of her own, assuming the name Bianca.  The game between the pair is as engrossing as it is disconcerting, and newcomer Pacini impresses opposite the Oscar-winning Cotillard.

The Ice Tower (French: La tour de glace), true to its title, is glacially paced, but it is also a hypnotic, immersive, and deeply unsettling work.  As the film advances, the worlds inside and outside of "The Snow Queen" begin to overlap, eventually shifting back and forth so fluidly that they become almost impossible to separate.  Hadžihalilović's meticulous mise-en-scène is greatly enhanced by the work of Earwig’s returning cinematographer, Jonathan Ricquebourg (also DoP on the Larrieu brothers’ Tralala), who expertly captures the wintry light that envelops both realms featured here.  The Ice Tower feels like the ultimate refinement of what Lucile Hadžihalilović has been developing throughout her impeccable feature film career; this is a, ahem, towering piece of real cinema from a major filmmaker.

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

The North (Bart Schrijver, 2025)

The North, the new feature film from Dutch director-producer Bart Schrijver, has been shortlisted for the European Film Awards.  The film has received an incredible response in a very short space of time: this year alone, the film has enjoyed theatrical runs in Luxembourg, Belgium, and Schrijver’s native Netherlands—where the film has already been viewed by over 115,000 people, making it only the second Dutch film this year to achieve such viewing figures.  The film also hit the number one spot in the Dutch Arthouse Top 30 for seven weeks.  Alongside The North, the team created a documentary, True North.

A decade after being best friends and roommates, Chris (Bart Harder) and Lluis (Carles Pulido) set out on a 600-kilometre hike through the Scottish Highlands.  Following the West Highland Way and the Cape Wrath Trail, they spend 30 days together in nature, hoping to rekindle their once-powerful friendship.  But while Chris remains preoccupied with work and life back home, Lluis is determined to finish the trail to prove he can do it.  The solitude and silence of the Highlands forces them to confront harsh truths about themselves, their friendship, and what it truly means to stand still and listen.

Written and directed by Schrijver, who co-produced with Arnold Janssen and Tom Holscher, The North was made for a mere €75,000 with a cast and crew of only eight people.  The team at Tuesday Studio, the production company behind the film, originally planned to simply sell the film online on their own TVOD website; however, after a glowing four-star review from The Guardian, everything changed.  More glowing coverage followed, including a piece in De Standaard, and the ball kept rolling until it landed at the doorstep of the European Film Academy, who shortlisted the project in the Feature Film category.

Schrijver began his career while studying architecture.  Using his first short films as his film school, he directed five shorts in his first year as a fiction director.  Since making the leap from short films to feature-length projects proved challenging, he co-founded a new production company, Tuesday Studio, with Janssen and Holscher.  In 2022, he launched his first project with Tuesday Studio, Human Nature, a film based on his 700-kilometre hike in Arctic Norway.  Schrijver combines his love for nature with his passion for filmmaking; to date, he has created 12 films and has hiked more than 5000 kilometres.

Source/images: Polymath PR