Rotterdam Film Festival, in Nod to ‘Backrooms’ and ‘Obsession,’ Sets Analog Horror 2.0 Focus

The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has unveiled its Focus programs for its 2027 edition, including a spotlight on contemporary analog horror and a look at the work of U.S. artist and filmmaker Jordan Strafer.

Also getting the focus treatment are Slovenian filmmaker Andrej Zdravič, whose work will feature in the festival’s Shorts Focus program, and the late Simon Field, an influential former director of IFFR whose What (is) Cinema? series will be presented “as a starting point for conversations about the future of cinema.”

Rotterdam will also celebrate “the enduring influence of Swedish producer Kalle Boman, whose six-decade career has helped shape generations of filmmakers,” organizers said. “Together, the programs explore the changing nature of cinema and the people and influences that continue to shape it, bringing together different perspectives to consider how the medium continues to evolve, both on and beyond the screen.”

IFFR’s Analog Nightmares 2.0 focus will feature such world premieres as Joshua Garity’s The Space Between and the concluding episode of the YouTube series Midwest Angelica: Landfall, a found-footage, analog and cosmic horror project by AQ Studio.

“Recent horror hits, such as Obsession and Backrooms, mark the mainstream arrival of a cultural shift which has been in the making since the turn of the millennium,” IFFR said. “Drawing on the aesthetics of obsolete media, found footage and unsettling fictional broadcasts, analog horror has developed a distinctive visual language and sensibility shaped by online communities, interactive storytelling, and the collective imagination of the internet. Moving between online video, Alternate Reality Games and games, theatrical cinema and other transmedia forms, the phenomenon has created new ways of experiencing and engaging with horror.”

Also part of the analog horror focus will be Ramiro García Bogliano and Adrián García Bogliano’s La Mancha, comedy horror Dance Freak from Robby Rackleff and Alan Resnick, as well as Wiktor Stribog’s surreal Smile Guide. Extending beyond the screening room, the focus will explore the participatory cultures surrounding analog horror through discussions and interactive elements.

Meanwhile, the Boman focus will explore the producer’s “creative influence on Swedish cinema, from his long-standing collaboration with Roy Andersson, whose Giliap will feature in the program, to his work with Ruben Östlund, who said that he most likely would not be working in fiction film today if it had not been for Boman.” The programme will include The Guitar Mongoloid, Östlund’s debut feature, Bo Widerberg’s Elvira Madigan and Marie-Louise Ekman’s absurdist The Secret Friend.

Strafer returns to IFFR with Talk Show, the final film in the Loophole trilogy, exploring the scandals and tragedies of the less illustrious Kennedy generation. The program will also include a selection of her earlier works, rarely seen on the film festival circuit, “bringing together a distinctive body of work in which Strafer draws on personal stories, historical records and fiction to create often bizarre and yet uncanny worlds,” IFFR said. “With her sharp eye for societal dysfunction and the often brutal mechanisms of power, her films are marked by strange performances, puppets, prosthetics, and plenty of punishment.”

The focus programs “give us the space to look more deeply at how cinema evolves: through artists who push its language, figures whose influence has shaped generations, and new forms emerging outside established structures,” said IFFR festival director Vanja Kaludjercic. “This year, it is particularly meaningful to honour Simon Field, whose curiosity, generosity and belief in cinema as a space for discovery helped shape the very spirit of IFFR. The questions he posed about what cinema is and what it can become feel as urgent today as they did 25 years ago. Kalle Boman’s extraordinary creative influence, Jordan Strafer’s movement between art and film, Andrej Zdravič’s immersive explorations of the natural world, and the unsettling worlds of analog horror each challenge us to see cinema differently.”

IFFR recently revealed a first wave of world premieres for its 56th edition, taking place Jan. 28- Feb. 7.