HIVOS TIGER AWARDS COMPETITION 2013 - WINNERS

IFFR congratulates filmmakers Mira Fornay, Daniel Hoesl and Mohammad Shirvani with their Hivos Tiger Awards! The directors each won – besides international recognition – a prize of €15.000.

During the ceremony on Friday 1 February in 'de Doelen', the winners of the eighteenth Hivos Tiger Awards Competition were presented. The three winners of the equal Hivos Tiger Awards 2013 are:

Chinese visual artist and filmmaker Ai Weiwei was not be able to attend the festival and commented on his jury duty in a pre-recorded video message.

THE WINNERS 

Fat Shaker - Mohammad Shirvani (Iran, 2013)

Shirvani's drama about a stern patriarch was, the jury stated, 'a fascinating story with superb characters.'

          

Fat Shaker is no ordinary film - certainly not by Iranian standards. Its maker, Mohammad Shirvani, is an artist who uses powerful and occasionally absurd images. It’s fairly obvious that they say something about the situation in the country, but precisely what is left up to our imagination. Shirvani states concisely that the film aims to criticise the patriarchal system in Iran. The rest has to be told by the images.

The story is about a fat father (obviously the 'fat shaker') who tries to con money from women with his young and attractive yet deaf-and-dumb son. The son allows himself to be picked up by a few young women for light diversion; then they are stopped by the father, who intimidates them and shows a pair of handcuffs. The women have to pay.

At a certain point, father and son pick up a woman who does not allow herself to be intimidated, but takes things into her own hands. And then the film becomes even more surreal - if possible - and the images even stranger. When asked for an explanation, the maker refers to his dreams.

The role of the father is played by Levon Haftvan. He also plays the striking protagonist in the film Parviz (also at this festival). As part of the Inside Iran programme, Mohammad Shirvani has also made a special installation; see Elephant in Darkness in Signals: Inside Iran.

           My Dog Killer - Mira Fornay (Slovakia/Czech Republic, 2013)

An unflinching study of a troubled teen in small-town Slovakia, the film was praised by its jury for 'showing a very strong subject from the inside'

       

Marek has no real friends except his guard dog and hangs out with skinheads. When his dispirited mother reappears in his life, Marek faces a horrible predicament. An authentic and hypnotic chronicle of a sluggish existence always on the verge of explosion.

A small village on the Slovak-Moravian border. Strangers are not welcome here. Locals seem to be suspicious even of each other. This is where eighteen-year-old Marek lives. His guard dog is his only true friend. Neglected by his relatives, he has found an illusory escape in the company of local skinheads. Nazi without a cause, he blindly follows them, and they train him exactly like he trains Killer, his dog. When his mother and young half-brother suddenly appear in his life, Marek faces a terrible dilemma. Either he will violently explode or he will find an inner capacity for the compassion he is so scared of.

This subtle, sensitive film is not just about racists and ethnic conflicts in contemporary Europe. First of all, it is about wrong choices that, once made, cannot be altered. It is about chances that appear, only to be missed. Mira Fornay captures this state of terrifying apathy in a series of long contemplative shots. Calm on the surface, they are full of hidden anxiety and disturbing uncertainty.

With no music, just natural sounds and real settings, Fornay makes what is almost a documentary portrait of totally lost human beings. The leading characters are very competently portrayed by native non-actors, and their huge contribution makes the film very authentic.

                        Soldate Jeannette - Daniel Hoesl (Austria, 2012)

A provocative portrait of two women from different ends of the social spectrum, Hoesl's debut feature was commended for it 'strong imagery and visual power.'

         
        
Fanni has had enough of money and leaves the city. Anna has had enough of pigs and leaves the farm. In the new game Fanni rolls the dice, while Anna does not think twice. Differences appeal to them and they move on cheerfully toward a new-found freedom.

Made in the most independent way, Soldier Jane is a film with a distinct personal signature in its impeccable aesthetics and original narrative, as well as in its philosophical account of freedom.

Fanni is a middle-aged businesswoman living a lifestyle that only the most advanced post-postmodern capitalist society can offer: independence, financial speculation, compulsive consumerism, matcha, Taekwondo. She is well off - apparently - so much so that she can bypass real money to surround herself with luxury and its highest form of absurdity: buying to throw away.

Yet, while indulging herself in the exuberance of extravagance and the ecstasy of momentary pleasures, her face seems incapable of the slightest expression. Before long, indeed, Fanni is at the end of the road. It’s time to fly away or sink.

'We only live once, once and for all', goes the song that welcomes Fanni at the farm as she arrives. She meets Anna, an attractive young woman in dire need of reinventing herself. Together, the comrades set out for new horizons, defying all conventions. 'A rich man can fall because of market ruses while a poor man has nothing to lose' - another song chanted innocently and loudly. Our heroines have indeed nothing to lose from now on.

Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films 2013 - Winners  

During the ceremony of the Canon Tiger Awards for Short Films Monday evening 28 January 2013, Beatrice Gibsons The Tiger's Mind, Zachary Formwalt's Unsupported Transit and Erik van Lieshout's Janus have been announced as the winners.

Next to the three Canon Tiger Awards for Short Films, another short has been nominated by International Film Festival Rotterdam for the European Film Awards 2013: Though I Know the River is Dry by the Egyptian filmmaker Omar Robert Hamilton.

Canon Nederland, sponsor of the Canon Tiger Awards for Short Films, offers the four winners each a Canon camera EOS-M with 22mm pancake lens.

          Janus - Erik van Lieshout (the Netherlands, 2012)

About a man from a working-class neighbourhood in Rotterdam-Zuid named Janus, a collector of curiosities who has recently died. And about art.

The artist Erik van Lieshout plunges into Janus's life by filming his family, neighbours and fellow-townspeople. Through interviews, he makes a connection with cultural-political subjects, such as the role of the artist and art grants. The images of Janus's environment are interlaced with shots of Van Lieshout's studio. Questions such as 'What makes real art?' and 'What do I need to do?' return in Van Lieshout's existential monologues.

          The Tiger's Mind - Beatrice Gibson (United Kingdom, 2012)

'The tiger fights the mind that loves the circle that traps the tiger.' Cardew’s score informs this abstract, collaborative and prodigious crime thriller.

Against the backdrop of a brutalist villa, this film explores the relationships between six characters: the sets, the music, the Foley, the special effects, narrator and author. Grappling, wrestling and dreaming with one another, they battle for control of the film. Like Cardew before her, Gibson’s forays into narrative and character are the remarkable results of a search for new and egalitarian modes of production.

          Unsupported Transit - Zachary Formwalt (the Netherlands, 2011)

Set on a construction site in Shenzhen, China's first Special Economic Zone, where a new stock exchange designed by Rem Koolhaas is being built.A story that begins with Muybridge's development of time-lapse photography. The use of this technique to show large buildings being constructed seemingly within minutes and without human intervention is reminiscent of what Karl Marx called the ‘abbreviated form of capital’, which seemingly breeds more of itself on the stock market without human agency, rather than being generated as surplus value through production.