IFFR adds five films to VPRO Tiger Awards Competition

39th International Film Festival Rotterdam

January 27 - February 7, 2010

PRESS RELEASE December 17, 2009

IFFR adds five films to VPRO Tiger Awards Competition

The International Film Festival Rotterdam has added five films to the VPRO Tiger Awards Competition. These include the world premieres of first fiction features from Costa Rica, Denmark and Georgia.

In addition to the three films previously announced, five titles by upcoming talents have been invited to compete for Rotterdam’s three equal Tiger Awards of each 15,000 Euro.

Paz Fábrega’s first feature film Agua fría de mar (Cold water of the Sea) is set on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica during the Christmas holiday season. It is the sensitive and atmospheric story of a young couple and a seven-year old girl with very different social backgrounds.

Danish directors and screenwriters Michael Noer & Tobias Lindholm will present their joint first feature effort R., a hard hitting prison drama as well as an almost anthropological study of life in a Danish prison. Johan Philip Asbæk plays the title role.

Georgian director Levan Koguashvili makes his feature début with Street Days, a moving drama about the life of a recently divorced junkie on the streets of post-war Tblisi.

Tsuki Inoue’s début feature film, after her prize winning short fiction The Woman Who Is Beating the Earth, is called Autumn Adagio. Japanese musician and actress Rei Shibakusa plays a middle-aged nun in a drama that deals with salvation, sexuality and identity in the different stages of a woman’s life.

From Québec, director Sophie Deraspe joins the competition with her gripping second film Les signes vitaux (Vital Signs) about a student who returns home to deal with the aftermath of her grandmother’s death. Earlier announced to compete for the VPRO Tiger Awards 2010 were Alamar (To the Sea) by Pedro Gonzalez-Rubio (Mexico), Mundane History by Anocha Suwichakornpong (Thailand) and Let Each One Go Where He May by Ben Russell (USA/Suriname). Agua fría de mar and Mundane History have been supported by Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund.

The complete line up of approximately fifteen films in VPRO Tiger Awards Competition will be announced by January 7, 2010.