(From top to bottom and left to right) Tiger Award winners: Anocha Suwichakornpong, Pedro González-Rubio, and Paz Fábrega, 2010; Ji Huang, Dominga Sotomayor, and Maja Miloš, 2012; Jakrawal Nilthamrong, Carlos M. Quintela, and Juan Daniel F. Molero, 2015.
This past week, Paraguayan director Paz Encina won the Tiger Award for Best Film at the 51st annual edition of the Rotterdam International Film Festival, for her third feature film EAMI. She became the latest Latin American filmmaker to win the top prize at the Dutch Film Festival, following a potent list of eleven directors from the region—from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay—that have won the coveted prize since it was established in 1995.
The first Latin American director to win the Tiger Award was Pablo Trapero from Argentina, with his 1999 debut feature Crane World / Mundo grúa. The Argentine neo-neorealist tale of an unemployed, middle-aged, beer-bellied ex-rocker and single father with an adolescent son, became a key title of the New Argentine Cinema of the late nineties, and its Rotterdam win propelled the nascent cinematic movement international.
One year later, the Uruguayan wry slacker comedy 25 Watts was awarded with the top prize at the festival. The film consolidated Uruguay’s influential role in the revitalization of Latin American cinema of the new century, launching the careers of many key filmmakers, including the directorial duo Juan Pablo Rebella and Pablo Stoll (Whisky), producer Fernando Epstein (Monos), and cinematographer Bárbara Álvarez (The Headless Woman).
In 2003, a second Argentine director won the Tiger Award: Santiago Loza for his character study Strange / Extraño, starring Julio Chávez and Valeria Bertucelli. The film tells the story of Axel, a doctor who no longer practices his profession and living temporarily with his sister and her children. One day, he meets a young, pregnant woman and a relationship develops between both of them.
Three years later, in 2006, another Uruguayan title took home the first prize: The Dog Pound / La perrera, the confindent debut feature by director Manolo Nieto, that follows a sesperate and unfortunate, lazy and hesitant, 25-year-old, who has failed as a student and lost the scholarship that financially supported him in the capital city. Now he must pass an exam that will take place in a year if he wants this grant to continue. In order to prepare, he has come to live at a small beach town where his father has given him the mission of building a house during the winter.
A year later, the Brazilian drama Bog of Beasts / Baixio das Bestas by Claudio Assis was presented with the Tiger Award. The film starring Fernando Teixeira, Mariah Teixeira, and Matheus Nachtergaele, tells the story of a man falls in love with a teenage girl, who is exploited by her own grandfather.
In 2010, two Latin American films were presented with the Tiger Award: Alamar by Pedro González Rubio and Cold Water of the Sea / Agua fría de mar by Paz Fábrega, which marked a milestone achievement for Central American cinema at the time that opened exciting possibilities for the cinema of the region.
Alamar follows Jorge, as he only has a few weeks with his five-year-old son Natan before he leaves to live with his mother in Rome. Intent on teaching Natan about their Mayan heritage, Jorge takes him to the pristine Chinchorro reef, and eases him into the rhythms of a fisherman's life. As the bond between father and son grows stronger, Natan learns to live in harmony with life above and below the surface of the sea.
Fábrega’s first film follows Mariana and Rodrigo, a young and affluent couple from San José, Costa Rica, who are spending their New Year’s vacation on the Pacific coast, when they find seven-year-old Karina, who has run away from her family. This random encounter will provoke anxiety for Mariana, particularly after the girl disappears the following morning after telling them of having been a victim of family abuse.
In 2012, Chilean director Dominga Sotomayor won the Tiger Award for her debut feature Thursday till Sunday / De jueves a domingo, an exquisitely close study of Lucia, an 11-year-old girl who during a family road trip is buffeted by her parents’ marital tensions, recriminations, and bitter regrets and by a countervailing sense of her own inchoate desires and yearning for freedom.
In 2015, two other Latin American films won the Tiger Award: the Cuban film The Project of the Century / El proyecto del siglo by Carlos M. Quintela, and the Peruvian film Videophilia (and Other Viral Syndromes) / Videofilia (y otros síndromes virales) by Juan Daniel F. Molero. Quintela’s intergenerational black-and-white drama tells the story of an engineer survives with his father and son in an abandoned nuclear complex. Videophilia follows Luz, a teenage misfit who spends her time slacking and experimenting with drugs and cybersex. She meets Junior online, an amateur porn dealer on a delusional journey regarding the end of the world and other conspiracy theories. Once they meet in the “real world”, unusual events start to unfold.
