Special Jury Awards go to Excess Will Save Us by Morgane Dziurla-Petit and To Love Again by Gao Linyang
International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has announced the competition award winners for its 51st edition. During the IFFR Awards Ceremony on 2 February, the festival revealed the main competition winners, alongside the IFFR Pro Awards. The Tiger Award went to EAMI by Paraguayan filmmaker Paz Encina. Excess Will Save Us by French Morgane Dziurla-Petit and To Love Again by Chinese director Gao Linyang both won Tiger Competition Special Jury Awards. The VPRO Big Screen Award went to Kung Fu Zohra by French filmmaker Mabrouk El Mechri.
Festival director Vanja Kaludjercic: “We are immensely proud of the extensive range of this year’s Tiger Competition selection. Even though we were forced to host our 51st edition online, we were determined to provide the competition filmmakers who trusted us with their films with a visibility platform to press and industry. We cannot wait to share these outstanding films with our audiences later in the year, in the way they were intended: on the big screen in the presence of the filmmakers. Congratulations to all the award winners.”
The Tiger Competition jury, made up of Zsuzsi Bankuti, Gust Van den Berghe, Tatiana Leite, Thekla Reuten and Farid Tabarki, on Tiger Award winner EAMI: “We were unanimously affected by the powerful film created by the director and the team that succeeds in building a strong narrative that not only sustains itself visually, politically and also poetically, putting the lights on the global massacres of indigenous tribes, through the cry of the Paraguayan Ayoreo-Totobiegosode. This film gave us the opportunity to dream and at the same time the chance to wake up.”
The Ammodo Tiger Short Awards were handed out to Becoming Male in the Middle Ages by Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Neves Marques, Nazarbazi by Iranian director Maryam Tafakory and Nosferasta: First Bite by American filmmakers Bayley Sweitzer and Adam Khalil. IFFR additionally nominated Becoming Male in the Middle Ages by Portuguese filmmaker Pedro Neves Marques to the short film category for the European Film Awards (EFA).
The third annual Robby Müller Award was received by Thai cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom. The FIPRESCI Award was given to To Love Again by Chinese filmmaker Gao Linyang. The KNF Award went to American filmmaker Jon Rafman for his short film Punctured Sky.
The festival’s platform for emerging film talent and IFFR’s flagship Tiger Competition presented a selection of 14 titles for its 51st edition. The jury will granted three prizes: the Tiger Award, worth €40,000, and two Special Jury Awards, worth €10,000 each.
Winner of the Tiger Award: EAMI by Paz Encina
Winners of the Special Jury Awards: Excess Will Save Us by Morgane Dziurla-Petit and To Love Again by Gao Linyang
The Big Screen Competition presented a wide-ranging selection of 9 titles, bridging the gap between popular, classic and arthouse cinema. An audience jury granted the VPRO Big Screen Award. The winning film received a guaranteed theatrical release in the Netherlands and will be broadcast on Dutch TV by VPRO and NPO. The award is accompanied by a €30,000 prize, shared equally between the filmmaker and the distributor who will release the film.
Winner of the VPRO Big Screen Award: Kung Fu Zohra by Mabrouk El Mechri
The Robby Müller Award honours an ‘image maker’ (director of photography, filmmaker or visual artist), in the spirit of the late Dutch cinematographer Robby Müller. The Award is a collaboration between IFFR, the Netherlands Society of Cinematographers (NSC) and Andrea Müller-Schirmer, Robby Müller’s wife.
Acclaimed Thai cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom received the third annual Robby Müller Award at IFFR 2022.
The Ammodo Tiger Short Competition presented 16 films between 1 and 63 minutes long competing for three equal prizes, worth €5,000 each.
Winners of the Ammodo Tiger Short Awards: Becoming Male in the Middle Ages by Pedro Neves Marques, Nazarbazi by Maryam Tafakory and Nosferasta: First Bite by Bayley Sweitzer and Adam Khalil.
In addition, IFFR also nominated Becoming Male in the Middle Ages by Pedro Neves Marques to the short film category for the European Film Awards (EFA).
A jury of international film journalists from the Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique awarded the FIPRESCI Award to their standout Tiger Competition title.
Winner of FIPRESCI Award: To Love Again by Gao Linyan
A jury from the Kring van Nederlandse Filmjournalisten (Circle of Dutch Film Journalists) selected their highlight from the Ammodo Tiger Short Competition for the KNF award.
Winner of KNF Award: Punctured Sky by Jon Rafman
The IFFR Awards Ceremony also marked the close of the 39th edition of CineMart which offered an online platform to 28 projects in development, including seven BoostNL projects and five Immersive. In total, seven awards were handed out.
Head of IFFR Pro Marit van den Elshout: “Organising this edition of IFFR Pro Days was in many ways more of a challenge than the year before, given our plans for a physical edition had to be very quickly adapted. The scale of the challenge allowed us to target our focus with a powerful streamlined programme. Our five IFFR Pro Dialogue sessions looked beyond the “new normal” of the pandemic to dream of what the “new possible” could be, so it seems fitting that our IFFR Pro Award winners represent such exciting emerging talent. Helping outstanding cinema come to fruition is, when it’s all said and done, the most valuable service we can offer.”
Eurimages is the cultural fund of the Council of Europe dedicated to supporting independent filmmaking. The Eurimages Co-production Development Award is an annual prize of €20,000 given to a CineMart project to support its set-up as a European co-production.
Amsterdam-based Filmmore is a leading full-service post-production, editing and visual effects facility. With the Filmmore Post-production Award they offer the best-suited CineMart project €7,500 worth of in-kind support.
The ArteKino International Award is a prize of €6,000 for the producer of a standout project to support its development, sponsored by the European culture channel ARTE’s foundation for the promotion of arthouse cinema.
This prize of €5,000 is awarded in partnership with the Wouter Barendrecht Film Foundation in honour of the late founder and co-chairman of Fortissimo Films, IFFR programmer and former head of CineMart, Wouter Barendrecht. Eligible for the award are projects with a director under 35 who has not directed more than three films.
4DR Studios is a volumetric video capture studio based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Representatives present two 4DR Studios Awards to outstanding Immersive projects presented at CineMart. The first prize consists of studio time, with the second prize offering a bespoke workshop.
First prize: Confident, Jérôme Blanquet, Bertrand Jeandel, produced by Maneki Films & Wise Bird (France)
IFFR Young Selectors are creative and ambitious Rotterdammers who offer film tips, curate events and promote the festival to local audiences. For this edition, they’ve chosen the CineMart title they’d most like to see come to fruition, based on the Spotlight presentations. The project receives a €2,500 prize.
The Dutch Post-production Award is a collaboration between the Netherlands Film Fund, the Hubert Bals Fund, and the Netherlands Post-production Alliance. This round, an independent jury awarded a formerly HBF-supported project a single prize of €50,000 to be spent on post-production in the Netherlands.
Winner: This City is a Battlefield, Mouly Surya, produced by Cinesurya (Indonesia)
Films in the Tiger Competition, Big Screen Competition, and Ammodo Tiger Short Competition were made exclusively available to accredited press and industry online during IFFR 2022. The festival will screen these selections in cinemas in the Netherlands later in the year.
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