Often after a festival, having watched a wide variety of films during only a couple of days, it is neither the plot nor the characters of those films that remain in your memory but a set of images. And at the 15th anniversary edition of the Luxembourg Film Festival, there was an astonishing abundance of stunning visuals, a testament to the great eye of the selection committee.
Some of my personal highlights from the nine films that made up the Official Selection of the Luxembourg Film Festival: a naked body covered in glistening diamonds in the Wallonian spy movie pastiche Reflet dans un diamant mort; real Napoli fans celebrating in the streets in Vittoria; illuminated crucifixes in the wonderfully meandering Georgian film Holy Electricity; a lonely truck driving through the Somali desert in the impressive debut The Village Next to Paradise; a package stuck on a conveyor belt in the British social realist drama On Falling (a moment somewhat reminiscent of the iconic ‘floating plastic bag scene’ in American Beauty).
Equally memorable, especially for its comedic effect: the robotic dinosaurs in a deserted theme park in Transylvania, roaring their mechanical roar even when no one is around, in Kontinental ’25. Proof that basically anyone can create arresting images, as Romanian director Radu Jude shot the film completely on iPhones (Kontinental ’25 was, according to the producer who introduced the film at the festival, a hastily put together, no-budget ‘bonus project’ after Jude finished shooting his much-awaited Dracula feature).
Of all the unforgettable visuals on display during the festival, however, there is one scene that has been truly seared into my brain since the moment I saw it on the big screen in Kinepolis Kirchberg, one of the three main locations of the festival: fireworks at high altitude in Bound in Heaven (Kun bang shang tian tang), directed by Xin Huo. In this Chinese romantic melodrama, gorgeously shot by cinematographer Piao Songri, we follow two lovers on the run from the law. As they glide high above the Yangtze River in a cable car in Chongqing, fireworks suddenly erupt all around them. The explosions of colorful sparks play no role in the plot of the movie. They might not even mean anything to the two main characters. But it’s an astonishing spectacle and a masterpiece of a scene nonetheless. In a way, it reminded me of a scene from another Chinese film, 2018’s epic love story Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Diqiu zuihou de yewan) from director Bi Gan, in which the camera suddenly takes flight. A moment of transcendence.
Interestingly enough, in two other films that were part of the Official Selection at the Luxembourg Film Festival, fireworks also played a significant role. In Hanami from debutant director Denise Fernandes, beautifully shot by young Mediterranean/Colombian cinematographer Alana Mejía González, a bunch of kids witness a daylight fireworks display above a lava field in Cape Verde. And in The New Year that Never Came (Anul nou care n-a fost) by Bogdan Mureșanu, another debutant director, it is a tiny spark that ignites the Romanian revolution, which will eventually bring down the reign of Nicolae Ceaușescu.
The New Year that Never Came will eventually go into the history books as the big winner of the festival, taking home both the Jury Award and the FIPRESCI Award (fascinatingly, it was the second year in a row that a film that fights oppression with humor won both prizes in Luxembourg, after Terrestrial Verses in 2024). But for those lucky enough to have seen all nine of the films in this year’s competition, it is the richness of the images that will be remembered most of all.
Jelly Schot
©FIPRESCI 2025