Sundance Film Festival Review: Stranger Than Rotterdam with Sara Driver

By: Joseph Perry (Twitter - Uphill Both Ways Podcast)

What do The Rolling Stones and Dudley Do-Right have in common? Well, for one, they are both major players in the charming animated short documentary Stranger Than Rotterdam with Sara Driver, which relates how one of the most influential American films of the 1980s received its funding.

One of my all-time favorite comedies — and films — is Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise, a black-and-white absurdist comedy about two Hungarian cousins and one cousin’s friend and gambling partner and their time in New York, Cleveland, and Florida. It won the Caméra d’Or award for debut films at Cannes in 1984 and was an important part of widening the door for independent American filmmaking in that decade and beyond. Getting the feature financed was no easy feat, though, as Stranger Than Paradise producer Sara Driver relates in this fun, informative short documentary film.

Winner of the Short Film Special Jury Award: Screenwriting at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Stranger Than Rotterdam with Sara Driver is “lived by,” written by, and directed by Driver, who is an engaging storyteller, and she has plenty with which to regale, including how she had to bring the only copy of a Rolling Stones documentary film with a title that can’t be printed on this family-friendly website to a film festival in Rotterdam, only to be taken aside by a customs agent to investigate whether she was bringing a pornographic film into the country.

As illuminating as it is entertaining, Stranger Than Rotterdam with Sara Driver is an amusing peek behind the scenes of how a classic American independent film went from a short film to a feature, narrated by someone who was a huge part of making that happen. 

Stranger Than Rotterdam with Sara Driver screened as part of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, which ran online January 20–30. 

Joseph Perry is one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast (whenitwascool.com/up-hill-both-ways-podcast/). He also writes for the film websites Diabolique Magazine (diaboliquemagazine.com), Gruesome Magazine (gruesomemagazine.com), The Scariest Things (scariesthings.com), and Horror Fuel (horrorfuel.com), and film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope (videoscopemag.com) and Drive-In Asylum (etsy.com/shop/GroovyDoom). 

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