Festival

Tiger Competition

IFFR’s trade mark competition celebrates the innovative and adventurous spirit of up-and-coming filmmakers from all over the world.

The competition was founded in 1995 with the aim of discovering, raising the profile of and rewarding up-and-coming international film talent. The Tiger Award is accompanied by a €40,000 cash prize, to be shared between the director and producer of the winning film. Two Special Jury Awards worth €10,000 will also be presented for exceptional artistic achievement within the competition. Equally important is the international recognition for the nominees and their works that a Tiger Competition nomination brings with it. The Tiger Awards are an indispensable backdrop for many filmmakers: it can be the final step to convince financiers to allow a next project.

Jury 2024

Marco Müller

Marco MÜLLER is a film critic and historian, producer and festival leader. He is currently director of the Film Art Research Centre and Professor Emeritus at Shanghai University. He was director of Ombre elettriche (Electric Shadows) festival in Turin (1981) and subsequently director of the film festivals in Pesaro (1982–1989), Rotterdam (1989–1991), Locarno (1992–2000), Venice (2004–2011) and Rome (2012–2014). He was head programmer of Beijing and Fuzhou Silk Road IFF (2015), initiator and director of Macao IFFA (2016), co-initiator and director of the Pingyao IFF (2017–2020), director of the Hainan IFF (2022), initiator and director of the Macao Festival of Young Cinema (2023). He was a former director of the Hubert Bals Fund (1990–1991), the Montecinemaverità Film Fund (1993–2000, Switzerland) and the South/East Cinema Fund (2000–2004, Italy). He has produced or co-produced 11 features that include award-winning films (Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and top-tier honours in Cannes, Venice and other major festivals). He has been a regular contributor to European daily newspapers and film-magazines and has written or edited over twenty books on Chinese, Japanese, Russian and Soviet cinema, Indian and Asian cinema.

Ena Sendijarević

Bosnian-Dutch writer, director and producer Ena SENDIJAREVIĆ stood out internationally with her idiosyncratic feature debut Take Me Somewhere Nice (2019), which was selected for ACID Cannes and won the Special Jury Prize at International Film Festival Rotterdam. She previously attracted attention with her short Import (2016), which world premiered in Cannes' Directors Fortnight and was the Dutch entry for the Oscars. Her second feature film, Sweet Dreams (2023), premiered in Locarno's main competition and won the Pardo for best performance. Sweet Dreams is the Dutch submission to the Oscars 2024. In 2020, Ena co-founded the Netherlands based independent production company Aventura.

Herman Yau

Dr Herman YAU has participated in more than 100 film productions. He developed much of his passion for film during his undergraduate days at the then Hong Kong Baptist College. He started off in journalism, but then switched to film in year two. Works directed by him include Ebola Syndrome (1996), On The Edge (2001), Ip Man – The Final Fight (2013), Sara (2014), Whispers and Moans (2007). His 2001 film, From The Queen To The Chief Executive, was shown in the Panorama section of the 51st Berlin Film Festival. In 2007, he was given a special tribute at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival, as well as the Director in Focus at the 31st Hong Kong International Film Festival. Away from the film set, Herman is also a prolific writer and has published several books, as he sees writing as another way to tell his stories and settle his mind. He completed his master’s in cultural studies in 2008, followed by a PhD in cultural studies in 2015 from Hong Kong Lingnan University. In 2019, Herman was granted the Distinguished Alumni Service Award by the Lingnan University, and in 2020, the Hong Kong Baptist University awarded him an Honorary University Fellowship.

Billy Woodberry

Billy WOODBERRY is one of the founders of the L.A. rebellion film movement. His first feature film Bless Their Little Hearts (1983) is a pioneer and essential work of this movement, influenced by Italian neorealism and the work of Third Cinema filmmakers. The film was awarded with the OCIC and Interfilm awards at the Berlinale and was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2013. His feature film And when I die, I won’t stay dead (2015) about the Beat poet Bob Kaufmann was the opening-film of MoMA’s Doc Fortnight in 2016. His work has also been screened at the Harvard Film Archive, Camera Austria Symposium, Human Rights Watch Film Festival, Tate Modern and Centre Pompidou. Woodberry has appeared in Charles Burnett’s When it Rains (1995) and provided narration for Thom Andersen’s Red Hollywood (1996) and James Benning’s Four Corners (1998). Since 1989 Billy Woodberry has been a faculty member of the School of Film/​Video and the School of Art at the California Institute of the Arts. Woodberry’s latest feature film Mário has its world premiere in the IFFR 2024 Limelight programme. 

Nadia Turincev
Nadia Turincev, born in Moscow in 1970, grew up in Paris and studied cultural anthropology at Paris X-Nanterre University. At 16, she began her film career as a trainee on Nikita Mikhalkov's Oci Ciornie"and later worked in various roles, including set interpreter, then at various positions in several European bodies such as ACE-European Film Studio, Europa Cinemas, the European Producers Club and the Creative Europe MEDIA programme. As a member of Cannes' Directors Fortnight selection committee and Moscow IFF's artistic director, she co-founded Rouge International with Julie Gayet in July 2007, producing titles including Raw (2016), the Oscar-nominated The Insult (2017) and Faces Places (2017). In May 2019, she founded Paris-based production company Easy Riders Films with Omar El Kadi.

Marco Müller

Ena Sendijarević

Herman Yau

Billy Woodberry_©JoanaLinda

Nadia Turincev

Winners per edition

2024
Rei
by Tanaka Toshihiko
Special Jury Award: Flathead by Jaydon Martin
Special Jury Award: Kiss Wagon by Midhun Murali

2023
Le spectre de Boko Haram
by Cyrielle Raingou
Special Jury Award: Munnel by Visakesa Chandrasekaram
Special Jury Award: New Strains by Artemis Shaw, Prashanth Kamalakanthan

2022
EAMI by Paz Encina
Special Jury Award: Excess Will Save Us by Morgane Dziurla-Petit
Special Jury Award: To Love Again by Gao Linyang

2021
Pebbles by Vinothraj P.S.
Special Jury Award: I Comete – A Corsican Summer by Pascal Tagnati
Special Jury Award: Looking for Venera by Norika Sefa

2020
The Cloud in Her Room by Zheng Lu Xinyuan
Special Jury Award: Beasts Clawing at Straws by Kim Yonghoon

2019
Present.Perfect. 
by Zhu Shengze
Special Jury Award: Take Me Somewhere Nice by Ena Sendijarević

2018
The Widowed Witch by Cai Chengjie
Special Jury Award: the screenplay of The Reports on Sarah and Saleem, written by Rami Alayan

2017
Sexy Durga
 by Sanal Kumar Sasidharan
Special Jury Award: Rey by Niles Atallah

2016
Radio Dreams
by Babak Jalali
Special Jury Award: La última tierra by Pablo Lamar, for exceptional artistic achievement in sound design

2015
La obra del siglo
by Carlos M. Quintela
Videophilia (and Other Viral Syndromes) by Juan Daniel F. Molero
Vanishing Point by Jakrawal Nilthamrong

2014
Anatomy of a Paper Clip
by Ikeda Akira
Han Gong-Ju by Lee Su-Jin
Something Must Break by Ester Martin Bergsmark

2013
Fat Shaker
by Mohammad Shirvani
My Dog Killer by Mira Fornay
Soldate Jeannette by Daniel Hoesl

2012
Clip 
by Maja Miloš
De jueves a domingo by Dominga Sotomayor
Egg and Stone by Huang Ji

2011
Tee-rak / Eternity
by Sivaroj Kongsakul
Musan il-gy / The Journals of Musan by Park Jung-Bum
Finisterrae by Sergio Caballero

2010
Mundane History
 by Anocha Suwichakornpong
Alamar by Pedro González-Rubio
Agua fría de mar by Paz Fábrega

2009
Be Calm and Count to Seven by Ramtin Ravafipour
Breathless by Yang Ik-June
Wrong Rosary by Mahmut Fazil Coskun

2008
Flower in the Pocket by Liew Seng Tat
Go with Peace Jamil by Omar Shargawi
Wonderful Town by Aditya Assarat

2007
Love Conquers All by Tan Chui Mui
Die Unerzogenen by Pia Marais

Ex aequo:
AFR by Morten Hartz Kaplers
Bog Of Beasts by Claudio Assis

2006
Old Joy
by Kelly Reichardt
La Perrera by Manuel Nieto Zas
Walking On the Wild Side by Han Jie

2005
4
by Ilya Khrzhanovsky
El cielo gira by Mercedes Alvarez
Nemmeno il destino by Daniele Gaglianone

Speciale vermeldingen voor:
Bride of Silence by Doan Minh Phuong & Doan Thanh Nhgia
Sanctuary by Ho Yuhang

2004
The Missing by Lee Kang-sheng
Summer in the Golden Valley by Srdjan Vuletic
Unterwegs by Jan Krueger

2003
Extraño
by Santiago Loza
Jealousy Is My Middle Name by Park Chan-Ok
With Love. Lilya by Larisa Sadilova

2002
Everyday God Kisses Us On The Mouth
by Sinisa Dragin
Tussenland by Eugenie Jansen
Wild Bees by Bohhdan Slama

2001
25 Watts
by Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll
Bad Company by Furumaya Tomoyuki
In den Tag hinein by Maria Speth

2000
Bye Bye Blue Bird
by Katrin Ottarsdottír
Mundo grúa by Pablo Trapero
Suzhou River by Lou Ye

1999
Following
by Christopher Nolan
The Iron Heel of Oligarchy by Alexander Bashirov 
Plus qu'hier, moins que demain by Laurent Achard

1998
Die Siebtelbauern
by Stefan Ruzowitzky
Giro di Lune tra terra e mare by Giuseppe Gaudino
Knoflíkari by Petr Zelenka

1997
The Day a Pig Fell into the Well by Hung Sang-Soo
Last Holiday by Amir Karakulov
Robinson in Space by Patrick Keiller

1996
Erzi by Zhang Yuan 
Like Grains of Sand by Hasiguchi Ryosuke
Small Faces by Gillies MacKinnon

1995
Fuyu no kappa by Kazama Shiori
Postman by He Jianjun
Thalassa, Thalassa, Rückkehr zum Meer by Bogdan Dumitrescu

IFFR 2024: Tiger Competition