International attendees were positive about the industry events at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), which saw over 1,000 meetings take place for CineMart, Darkroom and Lightroom projects included as part of IFFR Pro.
”It’s a great place for projects that deal with diversity, with art,” said French producer Ilann Girard, founder of Arsam, whose credits include March Of The Penguins. He has attended CineMart for three decades, presenting projects and, more recently, mentoring newer participants.
”It’s probably not the marketplace it used to be for sales agents and buyers, but it’s still something very innovative where we can spot new talent. It’s more of a creative lab. You have producers from all around the world, from every age and country. It’s a unique place, a place of innovation and creativity.”
Flemish producer Dries Phlypo, whose feature Dust is screening in the Berlinale competition this month, agreed that the event gives newcomers their best chance to build international networks. “Without CineMart, it is very, very hard for first-time filmmakers or younger filmmakers to find collaboration,” he said.
“For us as a company working a lot with non-European countries, CineMart is a key place,” added Tommaso Priante, founder of sales outfit Luminalia. “You are always going to meet very interesting established filmmakers, but also newcomers.”
Among the titles to grab Priante’s attention were Filipino director Whammy Alcazaren’s queer comedy Noodles, Our Love Was Instant And Forever, and Sudanese director Noura Adil’s Hidden Journey in which the filmmaker records her experiences as she flees Khartoum following the outbreak of war in 2023.
Priante also liked Syrian-German psychological thriller Last Trip, directed by Ziad Kalthoum and about a former Syrian war photographer traumatised by bondage imagery which reminds him of horrific things he once photographed.
Hidden Journey and Last Trip were both titles in the new Safe Harbour programme for filmmakers who have experienced displacement and forced migration.
Further projects generating buzz included Ridham Janve’s Portuguese Man Of War, a satirical fable about a 15th-century conquistador washed ashore in modern-day Goa, and UK director Joshua Loftin’s London-set doc fiction LFD Hope, one of the works in progress in Darkroom.
International hub
”Rotterdam is a good place to meet with key international sales agents. It feels like a very relevant space,” said Alex Polunin of UK production company Ossian International, who attended as the co-producer of New Zealand/UK production When The Goats Came, directed by Arthur Elias Gay.
The film, about a troubled teenager returning home from Scotland to New Zealand with his adopted mother in search of his missing father, is lead-produced by New Zealand’s Two Minds Productions, with support from the New Zealand Film Commission.
“We’re looking to attach a sales agent and at potential distributors that might come in early.”
Dutch director Mari Sanders was screening footage of his debut feature Stand Up, produced by The Film Kitchen, as part of IFFR Pro’s Darkroom’s works in progress section. Billed as “a deeply poetic exploration of life with a disability,” the project is the first feature to receive significant extra support from the Netherlands Film Fund to create a proper filmmaking infrastructure for disabled filmmakers.
“We’re not only promoting a feature film. We are promoting a way of working,” said Sanders, who had more than 20 meetings at CineMart, and said the film is expected to be ready around May.
“This is the place where we all come together and share the problems we are facing,” said the film’s producer Lisette Kelder. “For us, it is important to find a good sales agent and a festival.”
Joana Peralta of Portuguese production outfit Fado Filmes was a first-time CineMart attendee. Like many others, she was primarily there looking for coproduction partners. “I came here to see projects and to network with other producers,” she said. “We work on a lot of international coproductions.”
One practical measure of the Rotterdam effect is the projects the festival supports that go on to premiere at major international festivals. In 2025, there were over 20, ranging from Lucrecia Martel’s Landmarks in Venice to Carla Simón’s Romería in Cannes.
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