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FESTIVALS Netherlands

Unmade Beds in Rotterdam as fest kicks off

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Argentinean director Alexis dos Santos presented his section feature Unmade Beds [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), after its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. The festival kicked off Wednesday night with the premiere of US production The Hungry Ghosts from Michael Imperioli.

Dos Santos was discovered at the 2006 IFFR, where his debut feature Glue played in Competition (it was partially funded by the festival’s Hubert Bals Fund). This year, his London-set collage about the search for an identity of several foreign twentysomethings is part of IFFR’s new Bright Future section.

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Unmade Beds, produced by The Bureau in collaboration with Film4, UK Film Council and EM Media, follows the Spanish Axl (Fernando Tielve) and Belgian Vera (Déborah François), two of the many colourful inhabitants of a squat in East London. Both have a special connection with a nameless character (Dutch actor Michiel Huisman) identified in the end credits as “X-Ray Man”.

With the same hipper-than-thou aesthetics of his debut feature and a musical soundtrack that is just as iconic, Unmade Beds chronicles the lives of people in their twenties who are starting to realise that there are no longer blank slates, and that their decisions start to inform their personality. They are torn between enjoying the very end of their careless youth and leading meaningful lives.

Working with many of the same crew that worked with Norwegian director Joachim Trier (who made another ultra-hip search-for-identity film, Reprise [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Joachim Trier
interview: Karin Julsrud
film profile
]
, and the award-winning short Procter), Dos Santos is nothing if not ambitious – at times biting of more than he can chew.

Protagonist Pictures handles international sales.

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