IFFK 2025 opens with Palestine 36, and Mohammad Rasoulof takes the helm as jury chair
Annemarie Jacir’s historical drama Palestine 36 will inaugurate the 30th International Film Festival of Kerala (IFFK), which kicks off in the capital on December 12. Set against the 1930s Palestinian uprising amid British rule and waves of Jewish immigration, the film follows Yusuf as he moves between a tranquil rural home and the charged streets of Jerusalem during a period of upheaval. Palestine 36 previously earned the Best Film award at the Tokyo International Film Festival and was Palestine’s official submission for Best International Feature Film at the 98th Academy Awards. Jacir’s earlier film Wajib, which won the Golden Crow Pheasant at IFFK in 2017, will also be shown as part of the lineup featuring Suvarna Chakoram recipients from earlier festival editions.
The festival will honor Abderrahmane Sissako with its Lifetime Achievement Award for 2025. The Mauritanian filmmaker, born in Kiffa and raised in Mali, began his filmmaking journey with the short Le Jeu (The Game) in 1989 as his graduation project. His feature debut Life on Earth (La Vie Sur Terre) appeared in the Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 1999, while Timbuktu (2014) became his breakout international hit. Sissako’s work frequently explores globalization, displacement, exile, identity, and daily life’s struggles in Africa, helping to spotlight African cinema on the world stage. His Waiting for Happiness won the FIPRESCI Prize at Cannes, and Timbuktu earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. This year, five of his films—Life on Earth (1999), Waiting for Happiness (2002), Bamako (2006), Timbuktu (2014), and Black Tea (2024)—will be screened.
The Lifetime Achievement Award, first introduced in 2009, recognizes a filmmaker whose career has significantly advanced the art of cinema. Past recipients include visionaries such as Mrinal Sen, along with Jean-Luc Godard, Werner Herzog, Fernando Solanas, Alexander Sokurov, Jiří Menzel, Majid Majidi, and Béla Tarr.
Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof will chair the International Competition jury at the 30th IFFK. Rasoulof has earned eight Cannes prizes across four films, including The Seed of the Sacred Fig, which garnered four awards at Cannes last year. His career has been marked by ongoing friction with censorship authorities in Iran, leading to periods of exile in Germany. Although he has directed five feature films, none have secured a release inside Iran. Notably, he was arrested in 2010 while filming with Jafar Panahi and received a six-year prison sentence.
Original publication date: December 7, 2025, 7:24 PM IST
