As the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) gears up for its 2026 edition, the global cinema community is looking toward the Netherlands for a glimpse into the future of independent film. Under the steady and visionary leadership of Festival Director Vanja Kaluđerčić, IFFR continues to redefine itself as a space where artistic risk meets ethical responsibility. This year’s lineup, ranging from João Nicolau’s playful opening film Providence and the Guitar to a robust selection of Southeast Asian voices, reflects a deep engagement with history, memory, and the resistance against erasure. In this exclusive conversation for the International Cinephile Society, Sri Lankan journalist and critic Anuradha Kodagoda sits down with Kaluđerčić to discuss the thematic trends of the 2026 competitions, the strategic evolution of the Hubert Bals Fund, and the festival’s enduring commitment to championing South and Southeast Asian filmmakers on their own terms.

AK: As the Festival Director, you revealed the lineups for the IFFR 2026. What overriding thematic or artistic trends have you observed in the films selected for the key competitions for the upcoming IFFR 2026?

VK: Within the competitions, filmmakers are clearly engaging with how the past acts upon the present. Many works explore memory, inheritance and responsibility not as abstract questions but as pressures that shape daily life. Artistically, there is a strong sense of economy and confidence. In the Tiger Competition, filmmakers lean toward precise formal choices and shifts in perspective rather than overt declaration. The Big Screen Competition offers a complementary register, where accessible storytelling carries emotional and political depth. Together, the competitions present a cinema that is attentive, ethically grounded and deeply engaged with the world.

Beyond the competitions, these concerns resonate across the wider programme. ‘The Future Is NOW’ marks the 60th anniversary of the National Organisation for Women, bringing historical feminist works into dialogue with contemporary films, while our focus on Marwan Hamed highlights a major strand of Egyptian and Arab cinema and its evolving artistic and industrial conditions.

In short, IFFR 2026 brings forward filmmakers who are looking at the world with clarity and curiosity — questioning how we inherit histories, how we resist erasure, and how cinema can illuminate what is fragile, unresolved or transformative.

AK: Beyond the competition titles, how do the choices for the opening and closing films reflect the overall tone and direction you are setting for the IFFR 2026 edition?

VK: The opening and closing films are moments of shared attention — they frame how audiences step into the festival and how they leave it, not just emotionally, but in terms of what cinema can do as a collective experience.

This year we open with João Nicolau’s Providence and the Guitar, which is playful, generous and deeply committed to art that refuses to be instrumentalised — that doesn’t seek permission from productivity or convention. Predominantly set in the late nineteenth century, it speaks to the enduring conflict between creativity and social expectation, and to the stubbornness required to make art at all. That commitment matters: festivals exist because filmmakers continue to create despite varied, and often difficult, material or political circumstances. Opening with this film is a way of acknowledging and celebrating that reality, while bringing audiences into the festival with openness rather than solemnity.

We close with Rémi Bezançon’s Bazaar (Murder in the Building), a contemporary comedy-mystery that cleverly wears its cinephilia on its sleeve. It is energetic, elegant and unashamedly enjoyable — a reminder that pleasure and intelligence are not mutually exclusive, and that cinema thrives when it speaks to audiences without flattening its own ambition.

Taken together, the opening and closing choices situate IFFR 2026 as an edition oriented toward curiosity, play and openness, while remaining attentive to craft and the conditions in which films are made.

AK: In your opinion, how has the Hubert Bals Fund’s support for emerging filmmakers and independent projects strategically influenced the development of film culture across South and Southeast Asia?

VK: IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund has never worked from a fixed blueprint, and that is very much its strength. Its influence across South and Southeast Asia has grown organically rather than by prescription, responding to filmmakers and contexts as they evolve rather than steering them in a predetermined direction.

What we have seen in recent years is a growing need for support at the earliest stages of filmmaking. Development has become one of the most fragile phases of the process, particularly in regions where access to public funding, co-production structures or professional networks is limited. HBF often enters at precisely this moment, when a project is still searching for its form and its voice. That early trust can make a decisive difference, not only financially, but creatively.

Over time, this has contributed to a film culture where filmmakers are able to work with greater confidence and independence. Many projects supported by the HBF from South and Southeast Asia do not fit neatly into existing expectations of regional cinema. They experiment with form, scale and narrative, and often move fluidly between the personal and the political. As these films premiere internationally, travel across major festivals and find audiences well beyond their immediate contexts, they also reshape how cinema from the region is perceived and valued.

A strong example this year is A Useful Ghost by Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke, which was supported by the Hubert Bals Fund in 2023. After a remarkable international journey that began with the Grand Prix at Cannes’ Semaine de la Critique last year, the film now reaches Dutch audiences at IFFR 2026 in the Harbour programme. Its playful, surprising combination of humour, genre and emotional depth illustrates how films rooted in specific cultural contexts can resonate far beyond them.

Perhaps most importantly, the HBF remains present beyond a single film. Filmmakers often return to IFFR in different roles and at different stages of their careers, as artists, collaborators or mentors. This continuity has allowed a network of voices from the region to grow organically, contributing to a broader and more nuanced understanding of contemporary cinema from South and Southeast Asia.

AK: While many A-list festivals have a Eurocentric focus, the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has consistently championed South Asian cinema. As a Sri Lankan journalist, I am curious: what specific initiatives is IFFR 2026 implementing to further enhance the visibility of Southeast Asian films?

VK: For Southeast Asian cinema, as with cinema from any other region, IFFR positions films across the full breadth of the programme, allowing different forms, genres and generations of filmmaking to be seen in dialogue with one another and with global cinema more broadly. This year’s selection reflects that approach clearly. Films from the region appear across competitions and major sections, from large-scale historical narratives to formally adventurous and intimate works.

In the Big Screen Competition, Moonglow by Isabel Sandoval revisits the Marcos era through the lens of noir, combining political tension with atmospheric storytelling. In Harbour, titles such as A Useful Ghost and Magellan by IFFR veteran Lav Diaz demonstrate how Southeast Asian filmmakers continue to expand genre and historical perspective in unexpected ways.

In the Tiger Competition, Unerasable! brings a politically urgent and deeply personal perspective from an exiled Southeast Asian filmmaker working under a pseudonym. The film is produced primarily in Belgium (with Thailand and Sweden as co-production partners), but its authorship and political context are rooted in Southeast Asia and later in Europe, engaging with questions of censorship, survival and artistic freedom.

At the same time, emerging voices are given space to grow. Films such as i grew an inch when my father died in Bright Future or Ah Girl show how personal histories and family relationships are being explored with sensitivity and formal confidence.

This year’s Indonesian titles also traverse popular cinema and political reflection, including large-scale musicals, romantic epics and works engaging with historical trauma, while in Harbour one finds the Vietnamese action debut Fish, Fists and Ambergris, which will have its international premiere in Rotterdam.

This diversity is not incidental. By placing these films across sections such as Big Screen, Harbour, Bright Future, Limelight and Cinema Regained, IFFR encourages audiences and professionals to encounter Southeast Asian cinema beyond familiar frames. Combined with the support structures of IFFR Pro — including CineMart and the Hubert Bals Fund — and with strong contextualisation through Q&As, this approach aims to create visibility that is not momentary, but embedded in longer-term artistic and professional exchange.

AK: Are there any dedicated programs or focused efforts within the festival structures to showcase these voices?

VK: Rather than isolating filmmakers from Southeast Asia into a single showcase, IFFR focuses on creating conditions in which their work can develop, circulate and gain long-term visibility. Dedicated support exists, but it is embedded within the wider life of the festival.

The aforementioned Hubert Bals Fund plays a central role by supporting filmmakers at early and often vulnerable stages of a project, allowing ideas to take shape before market pressures set in. While at CineMart, IFFR’s co-production market, projects from around the world including Southeast Asia are presented to international producers, sales agents and funders. From 2026 onwards, this support is more closely connected through the new CineMart x HBF strand. Each year, six projects supported through HBF Development Support will be handpicked for a dedicated CineMart lineup, creating a clear market platform for filmmakers whose work dares to question, imagine and challenge the status quo. This formalises a longstanding relationship between HBF and CineMart, ensuring that these projects are brought into professional circulation with care and continuity.

AK: The IFFR offers various levels of support, including Tiger Membership and private-giving opportunities. How critical is this community and private support to maintaining the festival’s commitment to independent film?

VK: Community and private support are essential to IFFR’s independence and long-term vision. They allow the festival to make programming choices based on artistic conviction rather than commercial pressure, and to remain a place where risk, experimentation and new voices can flourish.

Our loyal group of Tiger Members are great IFFR ambassadors and so are all our partners and financiers. Their support makes it possible to invest in filmmakers over time, to sustain initiatives such as the Hubert Bals Fund and IFFR Pro, and to create space for films that might otherwise not be seen by a wider audience. It also enables IFFR to respond with flexibility to changing conditions in the film landscape, whether artistic, economic or geopolitical.

Perhaps most importantly, this form of support reflects a shared belief in cinema as a cultural practice that benefits from collective care. It reinforces the idea that independent film does not exist in isolation, but is sustained by a community that values curiosity, openness and long-term engagement.

AK: Films from the Global South are frequently chosen for their ‘cultural representativeness’ or social themes, while European films are more often selected for their exploration of individual subjectivity and formal experimentation. Why do you think this dichotomy persists in major festivals like IFFR?

VK: This is not a dichotomy we recognise or work with at IFFR. Filmmakers across all regions engage with both social realities and formal experimentation, and reducing films to either risks overlooking what cinema actually does.

What does persist are interpretive habits shaped by historical power structures. Films from the Global South are still more often read through the lens of context or representation, while European films are more often discussed through questions of style or cinematic language. This says more about how films are framed than about the films themselves.

Geography does matter, because visibility is uneven. Many regions remain underrepresented in the international circulation of films, and part of our role is to create space for that work to be seen, discussed and valued. But this has nothing to do with assigning certain regions to “content” and others to “form.”

At IFFR we try to meet every film on its own terms: what choices are being made, what the film is thinking and feeling its way through, how it engages its audience. By placing works from different regions side by side in competitions and major sections, and by contextualising them through conversations and criticism, we hope to move beyond inherited binaries and towards a more expansive understanding of contemporary cinema.

AK: As the Festival Director of IFFR, what is your core message to filmmakers from Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia regarding the future of independent cinema and the type of stories you hope to see on the global stage?

VK: Independent cinema thrives when filmmakers follow their own curiosity rather than second-guessing institutional expectations. My message would be to trust that your perspective, your questions, and your way of looking at the world are already enough — they don’t need to be reshaped for an imagined international audience. Independent cinema remains vital when it refuses simplification and stays attentive to the realities it comes from, while also taking risks in form, structure and tone.

Festivals can play an important role by giving these voices visibility, context and audiences — not by defining how films should be made, but by creating spaces where a diversity of approaches can be seen and valued. At IFFR, we are drawn to works that are precise, curious and open — films that invite audiences into complex worlds rather than offering easy conclusions. These films broaden the scope of what cinema can say and how it can say it.

From IFFR’s perspective, filmmakers from Southeast Asia are an integral part of the global independent landscape. Their work continues to challenge, surprise and move us — not by conforming, but by staying true to their own cinematic instincts.

(c) Image copyright: Anne Reitsma