Paraguayan filmmaker Paz Encina was announced the winner of this year’s Tiger Award for Best Film at the 51st edition of the Rotterdam Film Festival, for her third feature film EAMI. The award comes with a cash prize of €40,000 cash prize, approximately $45,000.
“We were unanimously affected by the powerful film created by the director and the team that succeeds in building a strong narrative that not only sustains itself visually, politically and also poetically, putting the lights on the global massacres of indigenous tribes, through the cry of the Paraguayan Ayoreo Totobiegosode. This film gave us the opportunity to dream and at the same time the chance to wake up” said the jury in a written statement.
This year’s jury was composed of Brazilian producer Tatiana Leite, Belgian director Gust Van den Berghe, Hungarian sales agent Zsuzsi Bánkuti, Dutch actress Thekla Reuten and producer Farid Tabarki.
A co-production between Paraguay, Germany, Argentina, Netherlands, France, and the United States, Encina has made a dreamy, magic-realist film about a five-year-old girl called Eami, following the filmmaker’s immersion in indigenous mythologies of the Paraguayan Chaco. After the girl’s village is destroyed and her community disintegrates, Eami wanders the rainforest. She will have to live outside the rainforest, just like the coñone (literally: ‘the insensitive’). Embodying Asojá, the bird-god-woman, Eami falls into trance in which she walks slowly and stunned through her beloved forest as she prepares to leave it forever. Encina turns her final wander into an experience for all the senses, with enchanting images and a powerful sound mix.
Born in 1971 in Asunción, Encina studied Communication at the University of Asunción and film directing at the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has directed numerous short films and created various video installations. Her acclaimed 2006 debut feature Paraguayan Hammock / Hamaca Paraguaya, followed on from a previous short film (2000) and video installation (2002) of the same title, had its world premiere at the Un Certain Regard competition at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Critics’ Award, and played at numerous film festivals. In 2016 she premiered the feature Memory Exercises / Ejercicios de memoria, which won the Best Documentary Award at the Cartagena Film Festival.
The 51st edition of the Rotterdam took place January 26 - February 6, online.
