KINO Rotterdam

Taxi Driver (1976) returns to KINO for its 50th anniversary. Scorsese and Schrader’s decade defining masterpiece on male loneliness and its seemingly inevitable violence seems more relevant than ever, half a century later. De Niro’s Travis Bickle is the embodiment of the InCel stuck on the outside looking in, convinced his purifying punishment will right all wrongs. With a stunning supporting cast featuring Jodie Foster, Harvey Keitel, Cybill Shepherd, Albert Brooks and Peter Boyle, and the melancholic score from legendary composer Bernard Harrmann, Taxi Driver remains a flawless film if there ever was one.

[𝗠𝘆 𝗡𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗜𝘀 𝗩𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲: 𝗕𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝗥𝘂𝗶𝗻] Director Jeremy Saulnier (Green Room, Rebel Ridge) might fly under the casual filmgoer’s radar, but we genre enthusiasts are always looking forward to his smart, hard-hitting features that extract the most from the (often modest) budget and showcase great performances from up and coming talent. His 2013 breakout film Blue Ruin is a great example of his directing prowess, turning a simple revenge story into an emotionally charged slowburn thriller, centering around a transient loner way out of his depth as a wannabe distributor of retribution. With a great central performance by Macon Blair, this mood piece is the perfect bookend to our Vengeance series and a recent film that deserves more praise in our humble opinion.

The visually stunning Resurrection by Bi Gan premieres June 11th. A film that blends memory, dreams, and history into a surreal cinematic journey across different eras, marked by Bi Gan’s signature style of hypnotic long takes and poetic storytelling.

Screenings of Une femme est une femme (1961) start tomorrow. Jean-Luc Godard, the iconic figurehead of the 1960s Nouvelle Vague movement, presented his idiosyncratic vision of the musical: “a neorealist musical.” Starring French superstars Anna Karina, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean-Claude Brialy at the height of their popularity, this singular classic is both a playful homage to and an ironic dissection of the American musical.

Karina’s Angéla, a st******se dancer who longs for a child, becomes caught up in a light-hearted yet sharply observed love triangle. With its exuberant colours, humour and gorgeous score by composer Michel Legrand, the film shows Godard at his most accessible, without sacrificing his formal playfulness. To mark its 65th anniversary, this sparkling key work in Godard’s œuvre now returns to cinemas in a stunning digital restoration.

Agatha’s Almamac screens now in KINO. 90-year-old Agatha Bock lives alone on a remote farm in Manitoba, without running water, and lives for her garden. In this delightful documentary, she speaks with dry wit about her garden, her love life, and how duct tape can fix just about anything. A character you could watch for hours. Her niece Amalie Atkins did exactly that for six years, capturing everything on luminous 16mm film. A documentary festival favorite and an ode to individuality, slowing down, and of course: duct tape.