Leeds International Film Festival 2024 Re-Cap [SCREENSPHERE]

The 38th annual Leeds International Film Festival has come to end. The festival does so much for this city, connecting various theatres and event spaces from the heart of Leeds all the way out to Keighley.

Alongside the many screenings are social events and activities like film themed pub quizzes and bingo nights and a collaboration with See You Naked life drawing at Left Bank. For the uninitiated, you may not even notice there’s a film festival going on, but for those that do can find endless rabbit holes to get lost within.

The festival itself had such a deft and well researched programme. The international focus of the event allows you to travel across the world from the seat of a movie theatre. There are multiple programme sections at LIFF, most of which come with an award for the best film therein. The main ones are: Constellation, which focuses on exciting UK premieres and new filmmakers, Fanomenon, which looks at the weird and eerie side of modern filmmaking and Cinema Versa, which highlights the best and most innovative documentaries.

Elsewhere there was a huge selection of short films, retrospectives and restorations, which this year included The Weird of Oz, looking back on Australian New Wave cinema and deep dives into the career and inspirations of Leeds born filmmaker, Stuart Croft and icon of Indian cinema, Smita Patil.

Cinema Versa

For me, the Cinema Versa section is a stand out highlight. Opening this year with Trans Memoria by Victoria Verseau, this film was a delicate and poetic look into Verseau’s personal journey into womanhood and shows us just how important it is for people to feel comfortable and acknowledged in their own bodies.

This section also had many debut features, including a documentary that looked into failings of mental health services, with Lawrence Côte-Collins’ debut feature, Billy, and Nelson Makengo’s Rising Up At Night, an intimate portrait of the people of his hometown Kinshasa living in a blackout following a disastrous flood. This section was closed by the video memoir, It Was All A Dream by dream hampton, for which a full review can be found here. Fanomenon

The Fanomenon section was filled with the kind of genre pieces you would expect to find here and three film marathons, Day of the Dead, Night of the Dead and Sci-Fi Day. The section opened with Yang Li’s Escape From The 21st Century and closed with the black comedy anthology film, The Killers, in which four South Korean filmmakers present their take on a hitman narrative gone awry.

The winner of this strand was She Loved Blossoms More by Yannis Vesleme, who will now find their debut feature fits neatly into the wider scene of Greek weird wave. This film was a trip from start to finish. Three brothers attempt to build a time machine from their mother’s old closet in order to bring her back to life, but things take an even stranger turn when their drug induced experiments result in a nightmare that Cronenberg wouldn’t dream of. 

The Fanomenon strand is excellent for promoting new and unique ways of storytelling and filmmaking. The restorations of Rene Laloux’s Forbidden Planet and Time Masters took us through a development of animation from the 1960’s and 1970’s which is only appreciated more when watching the various animated shorts that were shown throughout the festival. One great instance of unique storytelling that combined live action, performance art and animation was Animalia Paradoxa, the third film by visionary Niles Attalah, a full review of which can be found here. Constellation

The main section, Constellation, was opened by Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial debut, A Real Pain, in which Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin play cousins David and Benji, who visit Poland in honour of their grandmother, a holocaust survivor. The film balances heavy subject matter with humour in the exact way one would expect from this pair. The tone of A Real Pain reflects that of the closing film, Nightbitch by Marielle Heller in which Amy Adams plays a stay-at-home mum who is convinced she’s turned into a dog. 

There was also a lot of political satire to be found this year, with the Ari Astor produced, Rumours, a surrealist take on a G7 summit gone wrong and Ukrainian filmmaker, Roman Bondarchuk’s, The Editorial Office. Bondarchuk was present for Q&A’s following screenings of his film, where he spoke about the bizarre reality of local democracy and his relationship with editor Viktor Onysko who died in 2022 as a result of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

There were many great social realist pieces throughout this section. Highlights for me were Eva Trobisch’s Ivo, which follows the life of a palliative homecare nurse who pursues a love interest in the husband of one of her patients. The story is complex and beautifully told with some stunning cinematography throughout. Likewise, Saulé Bliuvaité’s Toxic, tells a similar story of tough relationships in even tougher circumstances, a full review of which can be found here. Full List of Competitions & Winners

LIFF Audience Award for Best Fiction Feature: Memoir of a Snail directed by Adam Elliot

LIFF Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature: No Mans Land directed by Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal & Rachel Szor

Constellation Feature Film: The Fable directed by Raam Reddy

Fanomenon Feature Film: She Loved Blossoms More directed by Yannis Vesleme

British Short Film: Sleepyhead directed by Millie Garnier

Louis Le Prince International Short Film: An Orange From Jaffa directed by Mohammed Almughani

Yorkshire Short Film: Paula Says Hi directed by James C Thompson

Fanomenon Short Film: Marriage Unplugged directed by Florine & Kim Nüesch

Queer Short Film: ¡Beso de lengua! directed by José Luis Zorrero

World Animation: Shadows directed by Rand Beiruty

Documentary Short Film: At That Very Moment directed by Federico Luis Tachella and Rita Pauls

Leeds Music Video: The Rider by Matthew Herbert & London Contemporary Orchestra directed by Sebastian Lelio

LIFF Screendance: This Madness of Loving directed by Rola Shamas

Further coverage of Leeds International Film Festival can be found here.

Article originally published 18/11/2024 on Screensphere and can be found here.