INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL ROTTERDAM UNVEILS 2025 TIGER SHORT COMPETITION WINNERS

Rotterdam – 3 February 2025 – International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) has announced the winners of its Tiger Shorts Awards in a ceremony held in WORM Central Station. From the 20 titles in the Tiger Short Competition at IFFR 2025, A Metamorphosis (Myanmar) by Lin Htet Aung, Temo Re (Georgia) by Anka Gujabidze, and Merging Bodies (Italy) by Adrian Paci have been selected to receive Tiger Short Awards, with each prize worth €5,000. La Durmiente (Portugal, Spain) by Maria Inês Gonçalves was selected to compete for the next  European Short Film Award, whilst a jury from the KNF (Circle of Dutch Film Journalists) awarded the KNF Award to Temo Re (Georgia) by Anka Gujabidze. 

The Tiger Short 2025 Jury featured film and video art curator Angela Haardt, former Tiger Short Award-winner Frank Sweeney, and Production and Acquisitions Manager of world sales and production company Rediance Yaoting Zhang. 

The jury on A Metamorphosis: “Some films explain; others immerse. This one is not to be understood but experienced—like a dream where logic dissolves and meaning flickers just beyond reach. The director crafts a disjointed, hypnotic counter-broadcast. Images, texts, and melodies drift in a stream separately, yet together they create a world both infinite and precise, where the familiar becomes uncanny, daily life distorts into something eerie yet intimate. The film captures the disorienting texture of memory under dictatorship, where propaganda shapes childhood, and symbols seep into the subconscious. A lullaby echoes—soft, haunting, inescapable—blurring the line between comfort and unease. Like poetry, it thrives on the accidental, the fleeting, the inexplicable. It is an act of reclamation and rupture, almost playful in its defiance, breaking apart compositions and narratives once imposed, only to reconstruct them into something raw, elusive, and deeply felt. This is cinema as an open wound, as a lingering echo, as a rustic door—leading to forbidden memories while also opening toward possibilities of exit.”

The jury on Temo Re: “Connecting passing people and places through the eyes of a delivery driver hitting the same daily potholes, we are reminded that travelling shots may well be a question of morality. A cinematic exploration of urban mobility where the images refuse to move, this film is bursting with animate characters stuck in a broken city. Although Tbilisi here emits a particular kind of otherworldly decay - broken cities, structures and systems feel increasingly familiar. When things break down, they need a push, and in the space between these still images, we can imagine all that is solid one day melting. Keep your eyes on the road.”

The jury on Merging Bodies: “Although a commissioned film, it shows the process of making aluminium from the liquid mass to shields ready to be sold. But it is not the normal documentary we could expect. The beauty is in the scrupulous observations of tiny changes in the structure and colour of the product. At the same time the director does not lose contact with the labour force, the workers who stand behind. And those both qualities together makes it an unusual film that we wanted to honour.”

European Short Film Award 2025 nomination

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 La Durmiente (Portugal, Spain) by Maria Inês Gonçalvesfor for the European Short Film Award. 

The jury on La Durmiente: “​​A historical meditation poem, balancing between evocations of the past and the lightness of an afternoon workshop. The camera wanders, between documentary and reenactment, landscape and portraits, abstract and concrete, echoing the tradition of Portuguese cinema while exploring the richly intertwined cultural history of the Iberian Peninsula. The presence of architectural heritage shapes a timeless, otherworldly beauty, with an anachronistic approach. The child actors, innocent and solemn, guide us in contemplating the fate of women amid the great historical upheavals of centuries past. Rich elements are gently harmonised and constructed under the director’s delicate, gentle touch. A most promising work for European cinema.” 

KNF Award 2025 

A jury from the Kring van Nederlandse Filmjournalisten (Circle of Dutch Film Journalists) selected their own highlight to receive the KNF award: Temo Re (Georgia) by Anka Gujabidze. The jury consisted of Lisa van der Waal, Joyce Roodnat, and Sandra Heerma van Voss. 

Tiger Short Competition 2025 winners:

• A Metamorphosis, Lin Htet Aung (Myanmar), World Premiere
  

• Temo Re, Anka Gujabidze (Georgia), World Premiere
  

• Merging Bodies, Adrian Paci, (Italy), World Premiere [festival] 
  

European Short Film Award nomination: 

• La Durmiente,  Maria Inês Gonçalves (Portugal, Spain), World Premiere 
  

About IFFR 

_{International Film Festival Rotterdam’s (IFFR) upcoming 54th edition of the festival will take place from 30 January – 9 February 2025. IFFR presents a leading international film festival and year-round programme and actively supports new and adventurous filmmaking talent through its co-production market CineMart, its Hubert Bals Fund, Rotterdam Lab and other industry activities.}

_{IFFR seeks to expand, enrich and challenge people’s views of the world and each other through film and audiovisual arts. IFFR’s programme deepens appreciation of cinema in all its forms, broadens and diversifies audiences, and creates opportunities for independent filmmakers and artists from around the globe.}

_{Through IFFR’s visionary programming and forward-looking  initiatives, we create a haven for the plurality of voices, audiovisual formats and diverse storytelling. We are an essential destination for film professionals and film lovers. We support filmmakers and artists with funding and development opportunities and advance the impact of their work in the world. We are accessible to everyone. Through screenings, talks, exhibitions, education, professional initiatives and funding schemes we bring people from all backgrounds together, enabling discovery, recognition dialogue, learning and development. We look where others don’t and we open a space for ideas, pushing creative boundaries that have the power to transform.}

_{IFFR is supported by partners including Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap (OCW), Gemeente Rotterdam, Creative Europe Media, NL Film Fonds, Fonds 21, de Volkskrant and VriendenLoterij.}

More information for press

For more information, please contact the press department at press@IFFR.com. Click here to download the still in this press release. Photo credit: