Presenting the official competition of the Leiden International Film Festival — in music

An experiment in launching a film festival as a music album

For eleven years now, the Leiden International Film Festival has been highlighting the best and most inventive stories on film. As always, our competition will showcase the best and most creative new American independent cinema of the year.

Every year, we launch our competition before all other festival selections. This year, we decided to up our game and present our selection to you in a way that’s never been done before. By anyone. Ever!

We asked the incredibly talented musician Moon Moon Moon to watch all our competition films, and start writing music as soon as the credits started rolling.

The result: an remarkable unique album about twelve unique films.

Instead of serving as a mirror for the films, the music shows us the way the movies affected the artist. All music is still very Moon Moon Moon, but the films are all in there as well.

We released the album three weeks before the start of the festival. The music can be streamed online and on our website, so people can experience some part of the films in preparation of coming to the festival. And the music will be present during the festival, with mini concerts before and after screenings.

We hope this will provide our audience with a much richer movie going experience. An experience that starts a month before the screening, provides a deeper viewing experience and will stay with the audience longer, transporting us back to the festival every time we listen to our favorite song of the album.

Enough talk, let’s listen to some music.

You can find the album on Spotify and Soundcloud. During the festival, the album is for sale on vinyl in the Trianon Theatre.

Playlist

• Famous Last Regrets — inspired by Born To Be Blue
• Charlie Heaton In His “I Hate Everything” T-Shirt — inspired by As You Are
• The Night We Dressed Up As Humans For Halloween — inspired by Transpecos
• For The Rainy Backyard Scene On 0:06:43 — inspired by Lovesong
• Making a Living — inspired by Swiss Army Man
• Extra Scene, UFO Sighting — inspired by Kicks
• Sleep Cape — inspired by First Girl I Loved
• Reality — inspired by From Nowhere
• Extra Scene, Meteor Sighting — inspired by Joshy
• American Dream — inspired by American Pastoral
• Stranger Danger — inspired by GOAT
• Sitting Through Credits — inspired by Burn Your Maps

Check out the entire line-up for the American Indie Competition here in English or Dutch.