02/02/2015 - Cuban, Peruvian and Thai titles have bagged the top awards, while European films have received parallel prizes

The three IFFR 2015 Hivos Tiger Awards winners with festival director Rutger Wolfson (© Felix Kalkman)

On Friday 30 January, the jury of the Hivos Tiger Awards Competition of the 44^th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) crowned three films: The Project of the Century [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Carlos M Quintela, Vanishing Point by Jakrawal Nilthamrong and Videophilia (and Other Viral Syndromes) by Juan Daniel F Molero. Each Hivos Tiger Award comes with a prize worth €15,000.

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Quintelas’ second feature, The Project of the Century, is a Cuban-German co-production shot in black and white, and set in what was once a Soviet/Cuban nuclear power-station project (click here to read Cineuropa’s review).

Vanishing Point is a Thai title supported by the IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund, which marks the return of Nilthamrong after his feature debut, Unreal Forest (2010), which also screened at Rotterdam. Videophilia (and Other Viral Syndromes) is the second feature by Peru-born Molero, who was previously part of the IFFR Trainee Project for Young Film Critics in 2010.

European titles took centre stage when it came to the parallel prizes, whose winners included the UK’s Second Coming [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile] by Debbie Tucker Green (Big Screen Award), the Belgian-Dutch co-production Battles by Isabelle Tollenaere (FIPRESCI Award) and Denmark’s Key House Mirror [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Michael Noer
film profile] by Michael Noer (KNF Award), besides China’s Poet on a Business Trip by Ju Anqi (NETPAC Award) and New Zealand’s Dark Horses by James Napier Robertson, which snagged both the MovieZone Award and the Audience Award. 

In the most industry-orientated part of the festival, the CineMart market handed out three awards to projects currently in development. The Eurimages Co-Production Development Award went to the Belgian-French-Dutch co-production Tonic Immobility [+see also:
trailer
interview: Nathalie Teirlinck
film profile] by Nathalie Teirlinck, the ARTE International Prize was given to the Ukrainian-German project Luxembourg by Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy, while the brand-new Wouter Barendrecht Award was bestowed upon Cuba’s Santa y Delfín [+see also:
trailer
film profile] by Carlos Lechuga. 

The IFFR will return in 2016 with a new director, as Rutger Wolfson is stepping down from his post after eight years chairing one of Europe’s most artistic and avant-garde film showcases.