Discover our mini reviews from the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2022, starting with The Plains, a therapeutic road film, directed by David Easteal, and presented in the flagship Tiger Competition.
With a selection of over 100+ films, this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) is underway from January 26 to February 6. With an abundance of films to be watched, IFFR is the first international festival to jumpstart the year for cinema. Placed after Sundance and right before the Berlinale, IFFR’s vast selections has a movie for everybody interested in film. Whether it be retrospectives of filmmakers you may have never heard of (Cinema Regained section), the young exciting voices of up-and-coming filmmakers (Bright Future section), or the competition sections (Tiger and Ammodo Short Tiger Competition), plus many more that’ll be highlighted in future dispatches, the IFFR has a unique program that isn’t bounded by world premieres or A-list celebrities, but for the love of the artform.
Among the titles we’ve discovered at IFFR 2022 is The Plains, a 3-hour Australian fiction film, in which director David Easteal documents and acts in this therapeutic road film. Another IFFR Tiger Competition selection after last year’s equally great Australian film, Friends and Strangers, Australia is becoming a new and fresh voice in international cinema. With the camera in a fixed position for nearly 95% of its runtime (some drone shots) and directed at the windshield, showing the silhouettes of only two characters in the frame, David manages to capture the life of Andrew Rakowski, a law mediator who drives home from work approximately after 5pm. With this simple premise, the use of space, only using the interiors of the car, show a true trust of its viewers. Your miles may vary, but the only interactions from Andrew are through his cell phone, and his passenger, David, (played by David Easteal himself). The conversations go through Andrew and David’s background, Andrew’s mother whose dementia is worsening each month, and the road ahead, giving us the narrative construction with time and space delivering the emotions. What this film does best, is its use of setting and time. The act of coming home after work. To let go of all the work-related stress and problems, the drive home is the therapeutic time where one can wind down and come back to earth. As we join this ride with Andrew, we are admitted as a viewer into his backseat, finding out with him, how this interesting and relatable this man’s life unravels using his philosophical and poetic nature. With a perfectly executed needle drop that will be in contention for the best of the year, David knows how to use music in an extremely precise and emotional way. David Easteal’s newest feature film is one of the most audacious and great debuts in recent time, with a bold vision and entry to the road movie genre, The Plains.
