ROTTERDAM IFF AWARDS

Tiger Competition

The festival’s platform for emerging film talent and IFFR’s flagship Tiger Competition presented a selection of 16 titles for the 2023 edition. The jury granted three prizes: the Tiger Award, worth €40,000, and two Special Jury Awards, worth €10,000 each.

The Tiger Competition Jury consisted of Sabrina Baracetti, Lav Diaz, Anisia Uzeyman, Christine Vachon and Alonso Díaz de la Vega.

They gave the Tiger Award to Le spectre de Boko Haram by Cyrielle Raingou (Cameroon, France), calling it “a story that centres on its filmmakers’ patient and honest gaze on the hovering presence of violence, seen through the eyes of innocents.”

They gave a Special Jury Award to Munnel by Visakesa Chandrasekaram (Sri Lanka) describing it as “a great simple story about a young man caught between revolution and authoritarianism.”

They also gave a Special Jury Award to New Strains by Artemis Shaw and Prashanth Kamalakanthan (USA) which they described as “an original vision of life during the pandemic with the actors/directors putting themselves on the line to tell a harrowing and hilarious story of confinement.”

Big Screen Competition

The Big Screen Competition presented a selection of 16 titles, bridging the gap between popular, classic and arthouse cinema. A jury of film fans granted the VPRO Big Screen Award. The winning film receives 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.

Endless Borders by Abbas Amini (Germany, Czech Republic, Iran) wins the VPRO Big Screen Award 2023.

The jury stated: “The minimalist scenography and the effective use of silences enhance the focus on the unspoken dynamics within the community. The underlying current of tension, due to the harrowing situation in which the main characters find themselves, keeps you engaged throughout the whole film. We hope that the viewers will gain a deeper understanding of the complexity of making choices in difficult situations.”

The jury consisted of Heike Bluthardt, Wayne de Boer, Didi van der Burg, Annelies van den Houten and Han Nguyen.

FIPRESCI Award

A jury of international film journalists from the Fédération Internationale de la Presse Cinématographique awarded the FIPRESCI Award to their standout Tiger Competition title.

The FIPRESCI Award 2023 went to La Palisiada by Philip Sotnychenko (Ukraine).

The jury was Dunja Bialas, Monica Delgado, Francisco Ferreira, Serhii Ksaverov and Boaz van Luijk.