Croatian director Igor Bezinović’s documentary Fiume o Morte! exploring the complex figure of Italian poet and playwright Gabriele D’Annunzio has won the top Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).
The film also won the FIPRESCI Award for standout in the main Tiger Competition.
The two Tiger Special Jury Awards went to Sammy Baloji’s film essay L’arbre de l’authenticité and Tim Ellrich’s Im Haus meiner Eltern.
Photographer and visual artist Baloji’s film essay work explores the Democratic Republic of Congo’s colonial past and how that is tied up with the fate of the Congolese rainforests and their role as consumers of carbon dioxide.
Ellrich’s film revolves around a therapist, specialized in alternative ways to help the sick and infirm, who is forced to balance the demands of her professional life with those of her ageing parents and older brother.
The Tiger Competition Jury consisted of Yuki Aditya, Winnie Lau, Peter Strickland, and Andrea Luka Zimmerman. The Jury also initially included Soheila Golestani (The Seed of the Sacred Fig), but she was prevented from leaving Iran due to a travel ban.
In the competition for the Big Screen sidebar – bridging popular, classic, and arthouse cinema – the main Big Screen Award went to Swedish director Jon Blåhed’s Raptures.
The jury consisted of Bero Beyer, Dewi Reijs, Jia Zhao, Sara Rajaei, and Digna Sinke.
NETPAC Award, for the best feature film from the Asia and Pacific regions by a jury from the Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema, went to Varsha Bharath’s energetic coming-of-age tale Bad Girl going inside the mind of a rebellious Indian teenager navigating adolescence within the confines of a wealthy, conservative family.
The Netpac jury was made up of Mevlut Akkaya, Rainbow Fong, and Rüdiger Tomczac.
