During the International Film Festival Rotterdam, photographer Rogier Maaskant shot these stunning portrets of some of the directors and actors.

Spontaneous
Most of these photos where shot spontaneously, on the roof terrace of the ‘Doelen’, the main location of the IFFR. Rogier: “All people I portrayed were very kind and willing to let me, the only director that needed a bit of encouragement was Mr. Rasoulof, but in the end he let me do my job.”

Cold
As we all know, during the filmfestival it was one of the coldest weeks in many, many years. So it’s not surprising that most actors and directors described Rotterdam as ‘cold’. I guess we will have to live with that…

Daring
The Iranian Mohammad Rasoulof is the director of the movie ‘Goodbye’. ‘If you feel like a stranger in your own country, its time to leave’, Mohammad said about the circumstances he had to face during the making of his film:

Tough
The filmfestival was a success; it was visited by 274.000 people (aside from the 303 directors, 372 jounalists and 771 CineMart guests). Rogier was at the festival every day, from around 12.00 pm to approx. 03.00 am. ‘The working hours where tough, but definitely worth it.’ Rogier says.

Wonderful
The South-Korean director Lee Kwang-Kuk made photo’s of Rogier, while he was shooting his portret. ‘He was very nice, he e-mailed me this week to say that he really likes my video’s on Vimeo..: ‘I think you have a good sense of small things’ , he wrote me. Well that is nice to hear.”

Lee Kwang-Kuk was really looking forward to his first visit to Holland, him being a big fan of Vincent van Gogh. According to Lee Kwang, the Film Festival in Rotterdam is very loved amongst other South-Korean directors and festival guests.

Dirty
Isodora Simijonovic stood in front of his camera too, she played the leading role in the often spoken of as dirty, raw, but good Tiger Award winning film, ‘Clip‘:

See all the portraits on his website.