52nd International Film Festival Rotterdam

25 January - 5 February 2023

Rotterdam, 29 January 2023

On Sunday 29 January 2023, the jury announced the winners of the Ammodo Tiger Short Competition at International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) 2023. The winning films are Natureza Humana by Mónica Lima (Portugal, Germany), Tito by Kervens Jimenez and Taylor McIntosh (Haiti) and What the Soil Remembers by José Cardoso (South Africa, Ecuador). The three titles receive equal Ammodo Tiger Short Awards, each worth €5,000.

The awards were decided by a jury of three: film and video artist Stanya Kahn, programmer, art curator and writer Herb Shellenberger, and writer, cultural programmer and organiser Simone Zeefuik. 

Mónica Lima,  Taylor McIntosh, Adrian Van Wyk (producer), José Cardoso

“Mónica Lima’s tender narrative establishes a context in the global Covid-19 lockdowns, zooming in on a couple whose difficult feelings are sown among the stillness of their sun-dappled apartment and garden. A soft-touch approach allows for Alba and Xavier’s relationship to be telegraphed over the course of several days, punctuated by encounters with a rogue peacock, a barking dog, several neighbours and, most importantly, their children. Natureza Humana brilliantly depicts the uncertainty of the global lockdowns – and the inevitability of life moving on despite them – creating an elegantly simple but effective chamber drama between its two protagonists and the animals and humans that surround them.”

Still from the film Natureza Humana

”Kervens “Tito” Jimenez’s spy cam footage steals painful glimpses of incarcerated life. A crucial point of view, Tito’s rare images of capture shake one to the core. Full of life and free from formal constraint, this work was a bright light and leaves us bereft that its young maker isn’t here to receive this award. We award this prize trusting that Tito’s family and Haitian activists doing anti-incarceration work on the ground will continue to benefit from it. This film is part of a larger movement, a movement led by people from Haiti and its diaspora, for whom there’s much at stake. We believe that this film adds to the much needed decolonial conversations about ownership, agency and who gets to tell which story.”

Still from the film Tito

“José Cardoso’s dynamic, beautifully glitching experimental documentary brings us intimately into a community uprooted by South Africa’s white supremacist institutions. Using fragmentation, layering, jump-cuts and an almost gleeful rebellion against convention, the film’s stylings reflect the ruptures of dislocation and the electric tenacity of resistance. Cardoso’s editing upends our expectations of expository film, and despite all odds leaves us raucous, rooting for and charmed by a grass-roots movement to reclaim what they can of a stolen history.”

Still from the film What the Soil Remembers

IFFR is one of a series of film festivals throughout Europe that submits a candidate for the short film category of the European Film Awards. The jury nominated Repetitions by Morgan Quaintance (United Kingdom) for the European Short Film Award. 

The Jury on Repetitions, which they nominated for the European Short Film Award:“In one of her interviews, Nina Simone famously wondered, “How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?” For our EFA nomination, we selected the film that beautifully reflects one of Western Europe’s current realities: that of the working class uniting, striking, rejecting. We see it in Paris, in London, and we saw it in Rotterdam right here at the Coolsingel as this festival started. With its rhythmic composition and disruptive style, Repetitions refuses complacency and ease, bucking against narrativity and demanding full retinal and psychic participation of the viewer.” 

• Natureza Humana, Mónica Lima, 2023, Portugal, Duitsland, world premiere

• Tito, Kervens Jimenez, Taylor McIntosh, 2023, Haïti, world premiere

• What the Soil Remembers, José Cardoso, 2023, Zuid-Afrika, Ecuador, world premiere

• Repetitions, Morgan Quaintance, 2023, Verenigd Koninkrijk, world premiere

• Aqueronte, Manuel Muñoz Rivas, 2023, Spain, world premiere
• Blinded by Centuries, Parinda Mai, 2023, Thailand, United States, world premiere
• Delivery Dancer's Sphere, Kim Ayoung, 2023, South Korea, world premiere (festival)
• Fälle, Mischa Hedinger, Michela Flück, 2023, Switzerland, world premiere
• From Voice to Pulse, Zeno van den Broek, 2023, The Netherlands, world premiere
• La Grande Arche, Camille Authouart, 2023, France, world premiere
• I Can See the Sun but I Can't Feel It Yet, Joseph Wilson, 2023, United Kingdom, world premiere
• Last Days of Summer, Stenzin Tankong, 2023, India, France, world premiere
• Light of Light, Neritan Zinxhiria, 2023, Greece, world premiere
• Natureza Humana, Mónica Lima, 2023, Portugal, Germany, world premiere, Ammodo Tiger Short Award 2023 winner
• Never Come Back, Assaf Gruber, 2023, Austria, world premiere (festival)
• Night and Fear, Lipika Singh Darai, 2023, India, world premiere
• Pátio do Carrasco, André Gil Mata, 2023, Portugal, world premiere
• Phalène, Sarah-Anaïs Desbenoit, 2023, France, world premiere
• Pure Land, Tenzin Phuntsog, 2022, United States, world premiere (festival)
• Remendo, Roger Ghil, 2023, Brazil, world premiere
• Repetitions, Morgan Quaintance, 2023, United Kingdom, world premiere, European Short Film Award nomination
• Shabnam, Reetu Sattar, 2023, Bangladesh, world premiere
• Skin in the Crosswinds, Andrew Rubin, 2023, United States, world premiere
• Square the Circle, Hanna Hovitie, 2023, Finland, world premiere (festival)
• Theta, Lawrence Lek, 2023, United Kingdom, world premiere (festival)\
• Tito, Kervens Jimenez, Taylor McIntosh, 2023, Haiti, world premiere, Ammodo Tiger Short Award 2023 winner
• What the Soil Remembers, José Cardoso, 2023, South Africa, Ecuador, world
• Zabriskie Point, Cho Seoungho, 2023, United States, world premiere

Browse the nominees here.