Ammodo Tiger Short Competition
The power of short. Sixteen films compete for one of three equal awards.
Check the Ammodo Tiger Short Competition programme
Short films can be found at many places during IFFR: as part of video installations, preceding feature films at Pathé premieres and, naturally, in combined programmes. Films between 1 and 63 minutes long, from all over the world. There are fiction films, experimental work and documentaries. Short films prove that filmmakers play with a whole range of cinematic forms and ideas.
The short films have their own competition at IFFR. What differentiates it from the Tiger Competition for feature-length films is the fact that it's not just for young and upcoming talents; all filmmakers have a chance at winning. 24 shorts competed for three equal Ammodo Tiger Short Awards at IFFR 2023, each worth €5,000.
Ammodo Tiger Short Competition 2023 winners:
- Natureza Humana, Mónica Lima, 2023, Portugal, Germany, world premiere
- Tito, Kervens Jimenez, Taylor McIntosh, 2023, Haiti, world premiere
- What the Soil Remembers, José Cardoso, 2023, South Africa, Ecuador, world premiere
Jury statements 2023
The jury on Natureza Humana:
“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.”
The jury on Tito:
“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.”
The jury on What the Soil Remembers:
“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.”
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.”
Jury members 2023
Herb Shellenberger
Herb SHELLENBERGER is a film programmer, curator, writer and artworker currently based in suburban Pennsylvania, USA. He's worked as a Programmer for Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival since 2016 and as Assistant Director for Media City Film Festival since 2022. In 2021, he co-edited the newly-revised edition of Amos Vogel's Film as a Subversive Art. He has curated retrospectives devoted to the work of a diverse range of artists and filmmakers including Sophia Al-Maria, Anti-Archive, Emily Chao, Sid Iandovka & Anya Tsyrlina, Payal Kapadia, Ali Khamraev, Markku Lehmuskallio & Anastasia Lapsui, Jonas Mekas, New Red Order, Sergei Parajanov, Alice Anne Parker, Ron Rice, Tiffany Sia, Jean Vigo and Al Wong.
Simone Zeefuik
Simone ZEEFUIK is an Afro-Dutch writer and cultural programmer. She’s the initiator of Blacker Blackness, the temporary master programme at Amsterdam’s Sandberg Institute. Zeefuik’s work focuses on imagination, joy, representation and the (de)spectaclising of Blackness. Aside from her articles, which she publishes and links to onlazeefuik.com, she often posts notes about her (re)imaginations on Instagram as @lazeefuik. Zeefuik identifies as a film nerd and ginger tea critic.
Together with Romana Vrede and Ira Kip she founded PaarsPaars, the Blackity Black platform for reflections on work by Afro-Dutch artists. With Richard Kofi she started the podcast Project Wiaspora.
Stanya Kahn
Stanya KAHN (1968, USA) is an interdisciplinary artist working mainly in film and video. She graduated magna cum laude from San Francisco State University and received an MFA from Bard College. In her hybrid media practice – which includes drawings, sound, writing, performance, sculpture and installation – she blurs the lines between fiction and documentary, often mixing pathos with humour and the uncanny. Kahn has collaborated with many performers, choreographers and other visual artists. She has exhibited worldwide at venues such as Institute for Contemporary Art Los Angeles, MoMA PS1, British Film Institute and ZKM.
Winners per edition
2022
Becoming Male in the Middle Ages by Pedro Neves Marques (Portugal)
Nazarbazi by Maryam Tafakory (Iran)
Nosferasta: First Bite by Bayley Sweitzer and Adam Khalil (USA)
2021
Maat by Fox Maxy (USA)
Sunsets, everyday by Basir Mahmood (Italy)
Terranova by Alejandro Pérez Serrano and Alejandro Alonso Estrella (Cuba)
2020
Apparition by Ismaïl Bahri (France)
Communicating Vessels by Maïder Fortuné and Annie MacDonell (Canada)
Sun Dog by Dorian Jespers (Belgium, Russia)
2019
Wong Ping's Fables 1 by Wong Ping (Hong Kong)
Ultramarine by Vincent Meessen (Belgium/France/Canada)
Freedom of Movement by Nina Fischer and Maroan el Sani (Germany/Italy)
2018
Mountain Plain Mountain by Araki Yu and Daniel Jacoby (Spain)
Rose Gold by Sara Cwynar (USA)
With History in a Room Filled with People with Funny Names 4 by Korakrit Arunanondchai (USA)
2017
Rubber Coated Steel by Lawrence Abu Hamdan (Lebanon/Germany)
El cuento de Antonia by Jorge Cadena (Colombia/Switzerland)
Sakhisona by Prantik Basu (India)
2016
Dream English Kid 1964-1999 AD by Mark Leckey (United Kingdom)
Faux départ by Yto Barrada (Morocco)
Engram of Returning by Daïchi Saïto (Canada)
2015
Things by Ben Rivers (United Kingdom)
La fièvre by Safia Benhaim (France)
Greetings to the Ancestors by Ben Russell (USA/South Africa/United Kingdom)
2014
La isla by Dominga Sotomayor and Katarzyna Klimkiewicz (Chile/Poland/Denmark)
Giant by Salla Tykkä (Finland, Romania
The Chimera of M. by Sebastian Buerkner (United Kingdom)
2013
Janus by Erik van Lieshout (Netherlands)
The Tiger's Mind by Beatrice Gibson (United Kingdom)
Unsupported Transit by Zachary Formwalt (Netherlands)
2012
Generator by Makino Takashi (Japan)
Big in Vietnam by Mati Diop (France)
Springtime by Jeroen Eisinga (Netherlands)
2011
Stardust by Nicolas Provost (Belgium)
Pastourelle by Nathaniel Dorsky (USA)
Jan Villa by Natasha Mendonca (USA/India)
2010
Atlantiques by Mati Diop (Senegal/France)
Wei Wen (Condolences) by Ying Liang (China)
Wednesday Morning 2 A.M. by Lewis Klahr (USA)
2009
Bernadette by Duncan Campbell (UK)
Despair by Galina Myznikova & Sergey Provorov (Russia)
A Necessary Music by Beatrice Gibson (UK)
2008
Ah, Liberty! by Ben Rivers (UK)
As I Lay Dying by Ho Yuhang (Malaysia)
Observando el cielo by Jeanne Liotta (USA)
2007
Video Game by Vipin Vijay (India, 2006)
Hinterland by Geoffrey Boulangé (France, 2007)
The Flag by Köken Ergun (Turkey, 2007)
2006
Beginnings by Roy Villevoye (Netherlands, 2006)
Rabbit by Run Wrake (United Kingdom, 2005)
Who I Am and What I Want by David Shrigley & Chris Shepherd (United Kingdom, 2005)
2005
Interlude by Joost van Veen (Netherlands)
Nuuk by Thomas Köner (Germany)
Veere by David Lammers (Netherlands)
Special mention:
Fare bene Mìkles by Christian Angeli (Italy)