Rotterdam 2026 Lineup: Charlotte Glynn’s ‘The Gymnast’, Ana Urushadze’s ‘Supporting Role’ & Tiago Melo’s ‘Yellow Cake’ Set For Competition

The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has unveiled its full lineup including for its main Tiger Competition.

The Tiger contenders include U.S. director Charlotte Glynn’s The Gymnast, Georgian director Ana Urushadze’s Supporting Role and Yellow Cake by Brazilian filmmaker Tiago Melo, who is best known internationally as a producer, with credits including Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Aquarius and Bacurau.

The Gymnast is Glynn’s debut feature. Set in Pittsburgh in 1993, it stars newcomer Britney Wheeler as a young gymnastics Olympics hopeful, opposite Ethan Embry as the single father who has devoted himself to his daughter’s sporting career.

Supporting Role is Urushadze’s second film after Scary Mother which won a raft of awards including best first film in Locarno.

Her new feature revolves around a once leading actor coming to terms with being offered a supporting role, in a story inspired by an incident that occurred when the director was casting her first film.

The jury features The Seed of the Sacred Fig star Soheila Golestani, Brazilian director Marcelo Gomes, Greek-French actress and director Ariane Labed, London Film Festival head Kristy Matheson and Croatian writer Jurica Pavičić.

They will choose the winners of the Tiger Award, worth €40,000, and two Special Jury Awards, worth €10,000 each.

Running from January 29 to February 8, the 2006 IFFR edition features 211 world, 47 international and 23 premieres across 428 features and shorts

The festival also unveiled the titles for its Big Screen Competition, which bridges popular, classic, and arthouse cinema and also dedicated to supporting the distribution of the nominated films in the Netherlands.

Algerian French director Malek Bensmail’s The Arab, U.S.-based Filipino director Isabel Sandoval’s Moonglow and Portuguese filmmaker Ivo M. Ferreira’s Projecto Global are among the 12 films to have made the cut.

They compete for the Big Screen Award which comes with a €15,000 cash prize. Additionally, IFFR offers €15,000 to the Dutch distributor that acquires the film’s distribution rights, to incentivise local distribution.

The jury comprises of Sara Ishaq, Loes Luca, Chris Oosterom, Mila Schlingemann and Jan-Willem van Ewijk.

The festival also unveiled 22 works elected for the Tiger Short Competition in 2026, which will be judged by Sammy Baloji, Anka Gujabidze and Jukka-Pekka Laakso,who will choose the winners of three equal awards worth €5,000 each.

In another announcements, the festival revealed it will open with the world premiere of the Portuguese feature Providence and the Guitar by João Nicolau.

Inspired by a short novel by Robert Louis Stevenson, the film follows Leon and Elvira, two performers trying to keep their stage careers afloat. Providence and the Guitar also marks the acting debut of Salvador Sobral, one of Portugal’s most beloved musicians and the winner of the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest.

The festival will close with the world premiere of crime comedy Bazaar (Murder in the Building) from French filmmaker Rémi Bezançon and starring Laetitia Casta, Gilles Lellouche and Guillaume Gallienne.

The film follows an enthusiastic Hitchcock scholar who becomes convinced that the neighbour across the courtyard has murdered his wife. With her husband, a successful thriller novelist, she launches an investigation that is by turns risky, absurd and revealing.

“The 2026 edition of IFFR unites new voices and returning artists whose works explore belonging, reinvention, humour, fear, beauty and the persistent human effort to understand our place in a changing world. Today’s announcement spotlights the competitions – the beating heart of the festival – with an array of titles that speak to our mission of audience discovery and championing filmmakers forging new paths in cinema,” said IFFR Festival Director Vanja Kaludjercic.

Tiger Competition Lineup

Big Screen Competition Lineup

Short Film Competition