Small Hours of the Night (Daniel Hui, 2024)

Daniel Hui's fourth feature Small Hours of the Night—which screened at the most recent edition of the London Film Festival—received its world premiere at this year's International Film Festival Rotterdam, where it played in the Harbour strand alongside the likes of Michael Gitlin's The Night Visitors, NZ coming-of-age tale (and festival opener) Head South, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo's horror The Soul Eater, and Damien Hauser's After the Long Rains.  The last of these films joined the 16mm-shot Small Hours of the Night at this year's LFF, but while the IFFR saw these two titles as stablemates (in the admittedly wide-ranging Harbour), the LFF placed the films in separate strands, with After the Long Rains assigned to Journey and Small Hours of the Night occupying a berth in Experimenta.

Inspired by the tombstone trial of Tan Chay Wa, Hui's film is a 60s-set two-hander that pits Irfan Kasban's nameless interrogator against Vicki Yang's Vicki.  As per the title, much of Small Hours of the Night appears to take place over the course of one long, dark night as the official quizzes his prisoner on various incidents, some of which are actually from the future.  For Small Hours of the Night is a film in which time is slippery, à la the work of Alain Resnais, and in one sequence—as impressive as it is eerie—Vicki watches a clock face on which the minutes tick by as normal, yet the date changes every few seconds.  The interrogator seems not entirely unsympathetic towards Vicki—think O'Brien's relationship with Winston in Orwell's 1984 (a tale set just one year on from Tan's trial).  

Small Hours of the Night is perhaps one of the more accessible examples of experimental cinema, but it's still a demanding film, one that requires much patience and attention.  While both of the actors put in strong performances, plenty is asked of them; the story largely unfolds in a single location, and Hui's dialogue isn't always able to keep the odd lull at bay.  The film invites us to read around what it presents; for example, it's fairly clear that Yang is playing a composite character, but what isn't obvious is that several figures from the tombstone trial have been incorporated into this persona.  Despite its aura of disconnect and frequent temporal shifts, those who stay the course will be rewarded by this haunting film, whose cathartic conclusion proves that even the darkest night is followed by dawn.  

Darren Arnold

Images: BFI

IFFR: Hubert Bals Fund Announces New Projects

International Film Festival Rotterdam's Hubert Bals Fund has selected 12 feature films to each receive a Development Support grant of €10,000. Diverse yet united in their common effort to remain vocal, the filmmakers of this funding wave extend across a variety of unique and creative styles. Tamara Tatishvili, Head of the HBF said: "This wave of grant recipient filmmakers each come from a different context but share a common approach—they do not remain silent or give in to despair amid the challenges of our current times. Instead they stay active, speak up, and make their voices heard through their stories and artistry. The filmmakers selected for the grants are just a fraction of those who submitted for consideration, making this an incredibly challenging round".

Brazilian filmmaker Lillah Halla is one of a number of filmmakers with an IFFR history who are supported in this round of funding. Her new project Colhões de Ouro is a dark musical comedy centring on Krista Bomb, an 85-year-old radical who plans to infiltrate and destroy a hyper-masculine cult to save her son. Kenyan filmmaker Angela Wanjiku Wamai's epic neo-Western Enkop (The Soil) sets the story of 55-year-old Lorna Marwa on the dusty expanses of Kenya's volatile ranch land. Kiss Wagon (pictured above) director Midhun Murali's next project, MTV i.e. Mars to Venus, is a similarly inventive feature that combines four different genres. Muayad Alayan's Conversation with the Sea follows a Palestinian man from Jerusalem who is ordered by an Israeli court to pay a debt owed by his late son.

Christopher Murray's Piedras gigantes tells the story of the archaeologist Katherine Routledge arriving on Easter Island in 1914. In Una Gunjak's road movie How Melissa Blew a Fuse, Melissa steals €200k from her workplace in Germany, buys a car, puts on music and heads towards her home town in Bosnia. Indonesian filmmaker Kamila Andini is supported for Four Seasons in Java, about a woman's journey to find peace after being wrongly convicted of murdering a young man. The short Notes of a Crocodile by Cambodian filmmaker Daphne Xu is now the basis for a feature of the same name; the HBF backs this docufiction hybrid project, which weaves myth, queer desire and politics against the Chinese development of a canal project in Cambodia.

Belarus is the setting for a dark sci-fi comedy touching on the immigrant experience in Darya Zhuk's Exactly What It Seems. In Falso positivo, Theo Montoya approaches the 'false positives' murders in Colombia, where civilians were killed by the military and falsely passed off as enemy combatants, to sculpt a narrative on the falsification of reality. Georgian filmmaker Elene Mikaberidze's documentary Blueberry Dreams (pictured above) had its world premiere earlier this year, and she's supported for her debut fiction feature Le goût de la pêche, which focuses on a young woman caught in escalating geopolitical tensions. Kasım Ördek's feature debut Goodbye for Now follows Sevgi, who is drawn into a dangerous search after her mother's mysterious disappearance.

Source: IFFR

Images: Festival Scope

IFFR 2025: Focus Programmes Announced

Four Focus programmes at IFFR 2025 will celebrate the contributions of underappreciated filmmakers and revisit historical and cultural legacies, with the strands highlighting documentary filmmaker Katja Raganelli; Ukranian director Sergii Masloboishchykov; the 70th anniversary of the Bandung Conference; and VHS culture. The first titles in the programmes include world premieres of Alex Ross Perry's Videoheaven and Rotterdam filmmaker Gyz La Rivière’s Videotheek Marco.

Perry’s documentary Videoheaven (pictured above), which chronicles the history of video stores in Hollywood cinema, anchors Hold Video in Your Hands, a Focus programme celebrating the community spirit of VHS culture. This programme examines the interplay of private and public film cultures. Rotterdam filmmaker La Rivière returns to the festival with his ode to the video store Videotheek Marco (pictured below), an investigation into local video store history and connected audiovisual activities like community television.

As conversations evolve around streaming platforms and their impact on cinematic viewing practices, IFFR presents a timely exploration of VHS culture deeply rooted in community, creativity and unique viewing practices. This diverse programme includes film screenings ranging from the 2011 Indian documentary Videokaaran to David Cronenberg’s latest, The Shrouds (pictured top), as well as interactive projects inviting Rotterdam citizens to share their personal home video stories, creating a communal cinematic experience.

Source/images: IFFR