22/10/2010

The first big European film festival on the calendar, the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), has announced it will be spotlighting the work of French director F.J. Ossang and Catalan filmmaker Agustí Villaronga during its 2011 edition. The 40th IFFR will run from January 26 through February 6.

Both filmmakers premiered new work just last month: Ossang’s Dharma Guns [+see also:
trailer
film profile] premiered at the Venice Film Festival in the Horizons section, while Villaronga’s Black Bread [+see also:
trailer
film profile] (see news) had its premiere as a Competition title at the San Sebastian Film Festival.

Ossang has made four feature films and five shorts. His work, according to the festival, “is expressive, dark and plays with the conventions of the thriller and science fiction genres. It is also characterised by musical references to post-punk and industrial bands.” His first film, L’Affaire des Divisions Morituri, screened at IFFR in 1985.

Villaronga, who debuted in 1987 with Tras el cristal, became a household name in 2000 with the feature El mar. The festival suggested the filmmaker has “a considered style, with a marvellous eye for detailed stories shot through with inner struggle, religion, eroticism, death and – sometimes – outbursts of horror and violence.” Villaronga has directed five features, two documentary films and several shorts and works for television.

The filmmakers will be in Rotterdam to present their latest works as well as other titles from their filmographies, and will also participate in Q&A sessions with the audience.

The retrospectives are part of the festival’s Signals section, which will also showcase the work of U.S. filmmaker Nathaniel Dorksy, a series of Communist westerns, a series on the interaction between independent filmmaking and the fashion industry and the Raiding Africa programme, about Chinese-African relations.