Masterclasses offer rare, intimate access to some of world cinema's most significant figures. Each session is a conversation, not a lecture, ensuring genuine exchange. Among this year’s guests are David Leitch, Kelly McCormick, Elísabet Ronalds, Erik Hemmendorff, Amanda Kernell, Miguel Eek, and João Pedro Rodrigues.
Building Plattform: Erik Hemmendorff on Producing with Ruben Östlund
How do you build one of the most influential production companies in Nordic cinema without losing the ideas that made it radical in the first place? Drawing on more than two decades of collaboration with Ruben Östlund, Erik Hemmendorff traces the evolution of Plattform Produktion from its beginnings just after film school to a company behind some of the most internationally acclaimed Swedish films of recent years. Founded in 2002 with the ambition to challenge established industry models and create a space where ideas could drive films forward, Plattform has developed alongside Östlund’s work from early shorts and first features to increasingly ambitious international productions. Through clips, behind-the-scenes material and stories from across their collaboration, Hemmendorff reflects on the strategic and creative choices that shaped that journey: how a producer and director grow together, how a company evolves without losing its original identity, and how long-term collaboration can create the conditions for films that challenge audiences and bring something genuinely new to the screen.
Masterclass with Amanda Kernell
Celebrated at RIFF as this year’s Emerging Master, Amanda Kernell is one of the most distinctive voices in Nordic cinema. Born in northern Sweden to a Swedish mother and Sámi father, she transforms personal and cultural experience into fiction that reaches far beyond autobiography. Following a screening of Brace Your Heart, Kernell enters in a conversation about representation, identity, belonging and what families and communities choose to speak about, and what they leave unspoken. She will reflect on her approach to actors, landscape and point of view, and on the ways memory shapes her films.
Miguel Eek Twelve Years with Amílcar: Documentary Form, Archive and the Long Road to a Film
Following the screening of Amílcar, director Miguel Eek reflects on the creative and practical journey behind a film developed over more than a decade. Taking the film as a starting point, the conversation will explore how documentary form can emerge through research, archive, writing and sustained access; how a filmmaker works with politically charged material without reducing a historical figure to an icon; and how a project changes through years of development, financing, collaboration and editing. Moving between artistic process and the realities of independent documentary production, the masterclass offers an insight into what it means to stay with a film for twelve years and how to keep searching for the right cinematic form along the way.
Desires Without Apology: Masterclass with João Pedro Rodrigues
Following a screening of Will-o’-the-Wisp, João Pedro Rodrigues joins RIFF for a special masterclass on a body of work that has reshaped the possibilities of queer cinema. One of Portugal’s most important contemporary filmmakers, Rodrigues has been celebrated internationally for the precision, daring and freedom of his vision. Rodrigues has created films in which queer desire, eroticism, ritual and fantasy enter directly into conversation with the observed world. His cinema moves freely between documentary attention and myth, allowing bodies, identities and landscapes to become sites of transformation.
Masterclass with David Leitch, Kelly McCormick and Elísabet Rónalds: The Art of Taking Action
Join David Leitch, Kelly McCormick and Elísabet for an inside look at the art of storytelling—and what makes audiences connect with a film. Drawing from their work across action, comedy, thrillers and character-driven genre films, they’ll explore how characters, tone, emotion and collaboration transform an idea into a cinematic experience that surprises, moves and stays with us.
