From left to right: winning filmmakers Wong Ping, Vincent Meessen, Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani

48th International Film Festival Rotterdam

23 January – 3 February 2019

Rotterdam, 27 January 2019

On Sunday 27 January 2019, a three-person professional jury announced the three winners of this year’s Ammodo Tiger Short Competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). The winning films are Freedom of Movement by Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani, Wong Ping's Fables 1 by Wong Ping and Ultramarine by Vincent Meessen. They won three equal Ammodo Tiger Short Awards.

The jury was made up of Vietnamese artist Nguyen Trinh Thi, festival director of Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur John Canciani, and filmmaker/artist Lawrence Abu Hamdan. The three Ammodo Tiger Short Awards each come with €5,000 in prize money.

Still: Freedom of Movement

The jury on Freedom of Movement:

“This film thoughtfully contrasts images of emancipation and resistance, against sobering illustrations of what feels like the unsurpassable reality of structural racism. Most effectively this is achieved through two sudden and compelling stylistic shifts. Although the jury thinks it could be more condensed, this film effectively expresses the complexities of race and migration through architecture and the body.”

Still: Wong Ping’s Fables 1

The jury on Wong Ping’s Fables 1:

“This film inhabits yet subverts the form of fables in their use of animals, plants and objects to illustrate a particular moral lesson. This film plays with the expectations we have with narratives, leading it uncompromisingly to absurdity. It questions the lessons we have been told since childhood. Its most effective and innovative tool in this task is the bright, colourful, puerile, beautiful and sometimes repulsive digital imagery of the world that it creates.”​

Still: Ultramarine

The jury on Ultramarine:

“Rarely has the relevance of film to performance been so clear. The role of cinema here stunningly enforces the rhythm, vision, and urgency of the poet’s delivery. The film is precisely structured in a way that allows us to see the images the poet conjures, to sonorise the beat at which he speaks and to feel what is so radical in his utterance. The jury was utterly convinced.”

Ammodo, an organisation supporting art and science, became partner of the competition in 2018. In addition to the Ammodo Tiger Short Awards, IFFR will also present the Voices Short Award during the Awards Ceremony on Friday 1 February. The Voices Short Award, launced in 2018, is an audience award and celebrates the more narrative-driven short films in the festival’s Voices section.

Freedom of Movement has also been selected as IFFR’s Short Film Candidate for the European Short Film Awards 2019.

All films selected for the Ammodo Tiger Short Competition 2019:

• 27 thoughts about my father, Mike Hoolboom, 2019, Canada, world premiere

• ALTIPLANO, Malena Szlam, 2018, Chile/Argentina/Canada, international premiere

• Anteu, João Vladimiro, 2018, Portugal/France

• La bala de Sandoval/Sandoval's Bullet, Jean-Jacques Martinod, 2019, Ecuador, world premiere

• Black Bus Stop, Kevin Jerome Everson/Claudrena N. Harold, 2019, USA, world premiere

• E-Ticket, Simon Liu, 2019, Hong Kong/USA/UK, world premiere

• Freedom of Movement, Nina Fischer/Maroan el Sani, 2018, Germany/Italy, world premiere (festival)

• The Glamorous Boy of Tang, Su Hui-yu, 2018, Taiwan, world premiere (festival)

• Kodak, Andrew Norman Wilson, 2018, USA, international premiere

• Lost Tune, Reetu Sattar, 2018, Bangladesh, world premiere (festival)

• Maman Maman Maman, Lucia Margarita Bauer, 2019, Germany, world premiere

• The Mental Traveller, Taiki Sakpisit, 2019, Thailand, world premiere

• Mum's Cards, Luke Fowler, 2018, UK, European premiere

• Nehemías, Daniel Jacoby, 2019, Netherlands/Peru, world premiere

• Paranon, Zeno van den Broek, 2019, Netherlands, world premiere

• Party on the CAPS, Meriem Bennani, 2018, Morocco/Switzerland, world premiere (festival)

• Primeiro ato/First Act, Matheus Parizi, 2019, Brazil, world premiere

• Red Film, Sara Cwynar, 2018, USA, world premiere (festival)

• The Sasha, Maria Molina, 2019, Netherlands, world premiere

• Le silence des sirènes/Silence of the Sirens, Diana Vidrascu, 2019, France, world premiere

• Sojourner, Cauleen Smith, 2018, USA, world premiere (festival)

• These Silences Are All the Words, Madiha Aijaz, 2018, Pakistan, world premiere (festival)

• Ultramarine, Vincent Meessen, 2019, Belgium/France, world premiere
• Wong Ping's Fables 1, Wong Ping, 2018, Hong Kong, world premiere (festival)