The great Thai director, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, a Palme D’Or winner and regular visitor to IFFR, has said on several occasions that he doesn’t really mind if audience members fall asleep during his films. This is almost bound to happen to some of those visiting his new project, SLEEPCINEMAHOTEL, at this year’s festival.

“We asked him to come up with something that could be a new work at the festival,” IFFR artistic director Bero Beyer explains of Apichatpong’s idea for an installation that involves audiences, awake or asleep, in a very intimate way. They can book into the hotel, which is being established at the World Trade Centre Rotterdam as part of the festival’s Art Directions programme. There aren’t many beds, but non-guests can also visit during the day.

Beyer will be spending at least one night in Apichatpong’s cinematic hotel. He hails the idea as representing the adventurous spirit that makes IFFR “so much fun.”

In the same spirit, the festival is hosting a screening of Paul Thomas Anderson’s awards contender Phantom Thread, in which Daniel Day-Lewis stars in what he says will be his final role, as a British fashion couturier. The screening is accompanied by the Rotterdam Philharmonic. “These things are crazy, especially if they’re for a new film, but they always have a real cinematic power,” Beyer reflects on showing a movie with live music. Anderson is expected to attend the screening and Beyer hopes he will stick around at the festival to sample its esoteric pleasures.

Meanwhile, IFFR titles are going to be shown further afield than ever before. Half a dozen of the festival films (all of them directed by women) will be shown during the 4th edition of IFFR Live across more than 50 participating cinemas across the world – one of them this year is in Harare. Rotterdam is thus reaching audiences in post-Mugabe Zimbabwe.

The 2018 festival opens with the international premiere of Jimmie, a road movie about a father and his four year-old-son on the run across Europe, by Swedish director Jesper Ganslandt. “What I think is incredibly powerful about the film is that it takes a very concrete and very easily understandable concept and real takes it to the extreme,” Beyer says.

Rotterdam has always been known as “a discovery festival,” where you come to find new names and new talent. This year, though, there are plenty of well-established and illustrious guests, among them Paul Schrader, who will be introducing his Bergmaneque new feature First Reformed, in which Ethan Hawke plays a priest struggling with his faith. Schrader will also be giving a masterclass. Meanwhile, the celebrated British actress Charlotte Rampling (star of The Night Porter, Stardust Memories and Oscar-nominated for 45 Years), will talk about her role in Andrea Palloro’s Hannah. British satirist Armando Iannucci is also Rotterdam bound, to accompany his film The Death Of Stalin, which closes the festival.

IFFR boasts the oldest and most respected co-pro market, CineMart, celebrating its 35th edition. This year, that event is being given a radical re-think with 16 chosen projects as opposed to more than 30 in previous years. “The concept of co-production markets is well established. There are plenty of them. CineMart is always going to be a key part of what we do whether it’s 16 projects or 25 or 40 but the way of dealing with those projects is going to be radically different.”

“The aim now is to choose fewer projects but to give them more attention and exposure. (This process had already started through the Boost NL programme on which it collaborates with the Netherlands Film Festival in Utrecht.) Sales agents have responded warmly to the change, which makes CineMart less of “a rat race” and allows for a more painstaking and selective approach.