Rotterdam Film Festival Sets Malaysian Cannibal Horror and Nepalese ‘Crime and Punishment’ Adaptation for World Premieres
The International Film Festival Rotterdam has unveiled the first 10 world premieres selected for its 56th edition, with the initial lineup including a Malaysian cannibal horror-comedy, a Nepal-set adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and several films from returning IFFR filmmakers.
According to Variety, the newly announced titles will screen across the festival’s Bright Future and Harbour sections when IFFR returns from January 28 through February 7.
Among the selections with particular interest for genre audiences is Ali and Ben’s Spicy Meats, a Malaysian horror-comedy directed by siblings Feisal Azizuddin and Iskander Azizuddin.
The film follows Ali and Ben, two financially struggling friends whose failing pickle business unexpectedly changes course when they discover a recipe involving human meat. Their new product becomes a success, but the attention surrounding their growing business also draws suspicion from a local politician, forcing the pair to protect their operation.
Ali and Ben’s Spicy Meats will make its world premiere as part of IFFR’s Harbour section.
Bright Future, which focuses on feature-length debuts, will include Portrait of a Young Criminal, filmmaker Parbat Chapagai’s U.S.-Nepalese reinterpretation of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.
Set in small-town Nepal, the film follows David, an impoverished tutor who becomes attached to a teenage sex worker named Sonya. Believing he can save her from their circumstances, David decides to murder his wealthy employer. IFFR describes the film as a psychologically focused reworking of Dostoevsky’s novel within a new cultural and geographic setting.
Another genre-adjacent Bright Future selection is Lucila Las Heras’ The Muglur, a Mexico-Argentina co-production centered on Aurora, a struggling writer attempting to complete a fantasy novel while living under the control of her alcoholic father. Aurora enters into a Faustian agreement with a mysterious creature known as the Muglur, without initially knowing what the entity will demand in return.
The Bright Future lineup also includes Egyptian filmmaker Mohamed El Zayat’s In the Name of Galeela. The ensemble dramedy follows a community attempting to convince a blind grandmother that she is still making her planned pilgrimage to Mecca after the money intended to finance the journey is stolen.
Ben Hicks’ Kids Go Free, meanwhile, was filmed across the United States, Taiwan and Japan over a period of 15 years. The feature examines relationships, travel, economic uncertainty and questions surrounding the future through a kaleidoscopic narrative structure.
Several filmmakers with previous connections to Rotterdam will return through the Harbour program.
Angolan filmmaker Kiluanji Kia Henda, whose commissioned performance Resetting Birds’ Memories appeared at IFFR in 2021, returns with Karl Marx, Luanda. The Angola-Portugal production imagines a future in which Angola renews itself as a Marxist state, combining political satire with a time-traveling romance and elements of Afro science fiction and the spaghetti Western.
Rita Hui Nga Shu returns after the 2021 premiere of Decameron with The Lapse. The Taiwan-U.K. film combines personal material, declassified government documents and Hui’s AI-cloned voice as part of an examination of the relationship between political promises and the lived experiences of Hong Kong residents.
Cypriot filmmaker Kyros Papavassiliou, whose Impressions of a Drowned Man competed in Rotterdam’s Tiger Competition in 2015, will premiere Yiannis. The film follows a Cypriot teenager and his mother who travel into the occupied north after the body of the boy’s father disappears from a morgue. Their search leads them toward Yiannis, a bird psychologist connected to the father’s past.
The Harbour selections also include Omer Shamir’s documentary Waiting Room, which follows Palestinian photojournalist Mohammed Zaanoun and his family after they flee Khan Younis for Egypt. Shamir documents the family over the course of a year as they adjust to exile and uncertainty surrounding their future.
Ali Bakhtiari’s Tehran the Obscure Atelier of Desire completes the first group of announced Harbour titles. The documentary observes artists working inside studios across Tehran as they revisit unfinished paintings, sculptures, experiments and future projects while the possibility of war remains present outside.
“Cinema is at its most exciting when it challenges our expectations, when filmmakers find new ways to express experiences, contradictions and realities that resist easy answers,” IFFR festival director Vanja Kaludjercic said in announcing the selections.
Kaludjercic added that the first 10 films provide an early indication of the range planned for the 2027 festival, spanning comedy, horror, documentary, political filmmaking, literary adaptation and experimental work.
For horror audiences, Ali and Ben’s Spicy Meats and The Muglur provide the clearest genre entries among the initial selections, while Portrait of a Young Criminal brings Dostoevsky’s 19th-century psychological crime story into contemporary Nepal.
The 56th International Film Festival Rotterdam runs January 28 through February 7, 2027. The festival will unveil its complete program on December 16.
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