IFFR HONOURS SHORT FILM STORYTELLERS WITH COVETED TIGER TROPHY

IFFR 2018: Works from all corners of the international short film community earned plaudits when the judging panel at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) announced the Ammodo Tiger Short Film competition winners on Sunday January 28.

The jury consisted of Chinese filmmaker Ying Liang, who won a Tiger Short trophy in 2009 for Condolences; Dutch graphic designer Mieke Gerritzen; and, Kenyan filmmaker Jim Chuchu, founder of Nairobi-based arts initiative The Nest Collective. The winners were chosen from a field of 22 entrants, including 14 world premieres.

The three films to each earn the €5,000 cash prize were Mountain Plain Mountain, a co-production from Spain, Japan and The Netherlands co-directed by Araki Yu and Daniel Jacoby; director Sara Cwynar’s iPhone teen odyssey Rose Gold (pictured, right), from The USA; and, the latest installment of Thai artist Korakrit Arunanondchai’s meditative and sombre consideration of death, With History in a Room Filled with People with Funny Names 4, which draws upon the cultures of The USA, Thailand, South Africa and The United Kingdom. (Pictured, top; IFFR directors Bero Beyer, left, and Janneke Staarink, right, with Daniel Jacoby, Araki Yu, Sara Cwynar, and European Film Award nominee Heather Phillipson).

The jury commended the diversity of the narratives while recognising the humanism that binds the winning films. On Mountain Plain Mountain, they stated  “the directors find the microcosmos into which all the loneliness and the isolation of human beings is to be found.” In discussing Rose Gold, the jury said, “The film has been chosen because of the innocent imagery that also makes us feel uncomfortable, because we know that our world isn’t sweet and soft only.”

Arunanondchai’s work (pictured, left) earned particularly high praise, the jury remarking, “There are moments of breathtaking beauty in this ambitious, sprawling, yet deeply moving film. This film reminds us that for all our tech-enabled and capital-fuelled hubris, we remain lonely as we reach for greater meaning, staying inevitably mortal.”

Also honoured was Heather Phillipson’s WHAT’S THE DAMAGE from the U.K. (pictured, right), a timely reaction to the patriarchal white power cabals that govern world. The film was nominated by the IFFR judging panel to compete in the short film category at European Film Awards, to be held in Seville on December 15. "An amazing and original work with unexpected imagery composed as a new aesthetic,” noted the Tiger Short jury, noting, "There is infinite room in the world for cultural works that dissect, critique and rebuke the ghastly political phenomenon that is Trump, and WHAT’S THE DAMAGE is a worthy addition to that canon."

Amongst those competing for the IFFR Tiger Short awards were Australian-born, Paris-based Mel O’Callaghan with Dangerous on the Way, a shared production between Australia and Borneo.

All the nominated films will be screened over the remaining days of the IFFR, which runs until Sunday February 4 at various venues across Rotterdam.