MALAYSIAN filmmaker Amanda Nell Eu is making history as her debut feature Tiger Stripes is selected to be in competition at this year’s Cannes Critics Week, the festival announced earlier today.
Amanda is the first female director from Malaysia to be invited to the festival. This marks the fourth time a Malaysian film was selected at the prestigious festival – making it a significant achievement for the country's growing film industry.
The Cannes Critics Week is a parallel programme devoted to first and second-feature filmmakers.
A selection committee led by Ava Cahen, now in her second year in the position, chose 11 titles from 1,000 films screened and seven were selected to be in the competition.
All of the films in selection will have their world premiere at the festival. Seven are first films that will vie for the Camera d’Or and six are directed by women, including four of the seven films in competition.
A total of 13 shorts will also be added to the line-up which will be announced on Wednesday (April 19).
The Critics’ Week section is credited with propelling the careers of directors such as Alejandro González Iñárritu, Guillermo Del Toro, Wong Kar Wai and many more.
The news marks the first time since 2010 that a Malaysian film has been featured at Cannes.
There have only been three other Malaysian films that were chosen for Cannes, among which were U-Wei Haji Shaari’s ‘Kaki Bakar’ (1995), ‘Karaoke’ (2009) by Chris Chong and Woo Ming Jin’s ‘The Tiger Factors’ (2010).
Tiger Stripes follows a 12-year-old girl, Zaffan, who struggles with puberty and discovers her body morphs in a terrifying way. As she is further provoked by her own community, she soon learns that embracing her true self is the only answer to her freedom.
The film is set to star three new talents – Zafreen Zairizal, Deena Ezral, and Piqa – alongside veteran local actors Shaheizy Sam (‘Polis Evo 3, 2023’), Jun Lojong (‘Roh, 2019’), and Fatimah Abu Bakar (‘Imaginur, 2022’).
“I am super happy and very honoured. We started development at the beginning of 2018, and due to the pandemic, we had to postpone our shoot to 2022.
"It is a dream to launch our film in Semaine de la Critique, a perfect place for our crazy fun wild film,” Amanda told The Vibes.
“I hope that people can see a part of Malaysia that is not often depicted on the big screen. It is a film about empowerment and acceptance of who you are; which are also universal stories for everyone in the world,” she added.
Tiger Stripes is an eight-country co-production, with Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Qatar all contributing to the film.
The fact that it has received the Creative Industry Recovery Grant (Penjana) from the Ministry of Communications and Digital for its production in Malaysia further highlights the film's significance for the local industry.
The film is also supported by Taiwan Creative Content Agency; the Southeast Asia Co-production Grant of Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority; the Cinémas du Monde fund of the National Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image of France; the Nederlands Filmfonds; the Hubert Bals Fund and HBF+Europe Programme of the International Film Festival Rotterdam; Film und Medien Stiftung NRW; Vision Sud Est of Swiss Agency for Development & Cooperation; Berlinale World Cinema Fund; the Doha Film Institute and the Next Masters Support Program from Talents Tokyo and Filmex.
Amanda graduated from London Film School with an MA in Filmmaking and is an alumna of Berlinale Talents and Locarno Filmmakers Academy.
Her short film Lagi Senang Jaga Sekandang Lembu premiered in competition at the Venice International Film Festival.
The film has continued to travel and win awards in many other international festivals, including a Special Mention at the International Short Film Festival Clermont-Ferrand.
Her next short film Vinegar Baths has also won several awards in festivals, including Best Picture at Scream Asia Horror Shorts competition.
Alongside producer Foo Fei Ling, they founded Ghost Grrrl Pictures, a production company that focuses on female-centric stories coming from the Southeast Asian region.
The aim of the company is to represent strong, feared, and misunderstood females in cinema – from colossal monsters to tough little girls who just cannot fit in.
French filmmaker Audrey Diwan will preside over the Critics Week jury, alongside Portuguese director of photography Rui Poças, German actor Franz Rogowski, Indian journalist, curator, and advisor to the programming of the Berlin Film Festival Meenakshi Shedde as well as Sundance Film Festival programming director Kim Yutani.
The jury will award the Critics’ Week grand prix to the best feature film, the French Touch Prize of the Jury, the Louis Roederer Foundation Rising Star Award to the best actor/actress and the Leitz Ciné Discovery Prize for the best short film. – The Vibes, April 17, 2023
