An extraordinary situation calls for an extraordinary edition. While last year, the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival (BIFFF) was forced to keep its doors shut even before they’d had a chance to open, the organisers have (unfortunately) had time this year to rustle up a 100% online iteration, after having almost had the appealing opportunity to offer a hybrid version of the festival.

This will be a heartbreaking situation for a festival that is well known in Belgium and beyond for… its audiences – viewers who get incredibly involved, making their presence felt and expressing their enthusiasm, often rather rowdily. But be that as it may, this 39^th edition will still take place despite everything, with a programme bursting with no fewer than 48 features, including three world, nine international and four European premieres. It’s also worth noting that the festival is presenting 11 films that were selected for last year’s “coronaborted” edition, so as not to bid farewell to 2020 without a dignified burial.

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As the opening flick of the BIFFF, the Belgian audience will get the chance to watch the international premiere of The Shift [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Alessandro Tonda
scheda film], which was presented last autumn at the Rome Film Fest. A large chunk of the movie, directed by Italian filmmaker Alessandro Tonda, was shot in Belgium, and it is also set in Brussels. And later on, viewers will be laughing despite themselves when they see Riders of Justice [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Anders Thomas Jensen
scheda film] by Denmark’s Anders Thomas Jensen, starring Mads Mikkelsen, which recently opened International Film Festival Rotterdam and which will have the honour of bringing proceedings in Brussels to a close.

Within the gathering’s European Competition, we find the British films Caveat [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Damian Mc Carthy
scheda film] by Damian McCarthy and Host [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Rob Savage, the Italian movie The Guest Room [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Stefano Lodovichi, which will enjoy its international premiere, Meander [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Mathieu Turi
scheda film] by France’s Mathieu Turi, the Hungarian horror flick Post Mortem [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Péter Bergendy and the aforementioned Riders of Justice.

Selected in the International Competition are the Irish-US effort Son [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Ivan Kavanagh, which will have its international premiere, the Finnish-US title Sound of Violence [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Alex Noyer
scheda film] by Alex Noyer, which was presented at SXSW recently, and the Russian feature Superdeep by Arseny Sukhin.

Also of note is the fact that a Belgian film will be world-premiered at the BIFFF: Hotel Poséidon [+leggi anche:
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intervista: Stef Lernous
scheda film] by Stef Lernous, which is duking it out in the 7^th Parallel Competition, where we also find the Spanish movie The Barcelona Vampiress [+leggi anche:
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scheda film] by Lluis Danés.

And so Belgian viewers should not hesitate to flock to the online platform from 6-18 April while we await the 40^th edition in 2022, which staunchly promises to be an “in the flesh” version.