The Hivos Tiger Awards Competition of International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) gives up-and-coming talent the opportunity to shine on a global stage. IFFR announces the first five films selected in its Hivos Tiger Awards Competition 2014. Among these, one has been supported by IFFR’s Hubert Bals Fund.

The complete line up of the fifteen first or second features concurring for the three equal Hivos Tiger Awards of 15,000 euro each will be presented around 9 January 2014. The first five films selected for the Hivos Tiger Awards Competition 2014 are:

Concrete Clouds by Lee Chatametikool (Thailand/Hongkong/China, 2013, European premiere)

New York based currency trader Mutt returns home to Bangkok after his father passed away amidst the Asian financial crisis of the ‘90s. He faces past family and relationship issues in this moving yet light-footed first feature by Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s renowned editor. This project received HBF funding for script and project development.

Happily Ever After by Tatjana Bozic (Croatia, 2013, world premiere)

Filmmaker Tatjana Bozic grew up in Croatia before the Balkan War and ended up settling in The Netherlands. Her first feature-length documentary is a tragicomic portrait of her own love life. She revisits her past love affairs in a desperate effort to save her present relationship.

Vergiss mein ich (Lose My Self) by Jan Schomburg (Germany, 2014, world premiere)

Schomburg’s intriguing and occasionally humorous second feature shows a successful woman suffering from retrograde amnesia: her whole biographical memory disappears from one moment to the next. The film evokes fundamental questions about the construction of identity. With a convincing leading role by Maria Schrader.

Riocorrente (Riverrun) by Paulo Sacramento (Brazil, 2013, international premiere)

São Paulo is on the verge of exploding in Sacramento’s energetic and urgent fiction debut. A woman is torn apart by a variety of desires for two very different men, a journalist and an ex-con. Drama on contemporary Brazil, where everything is set in irreversible motion after ten years of economic growth.

Anatomy of a Paper Clip by Akira Ikeda (Japan, 2013, European premiere)

Akira Ikeda’s crazy and funny second feature is a dark fairytale revolving around Kogure, a paperclip bender in a paperclip factory, a man without characteristics and a stoical loser. One day he finds a butterfly in his flat. She becomes his wife, but is even stranger than the bizarre minimal world he lives in.

The 43^rd edition of the International Film Festival Rotterdam takes place from Wednesday January 22 up to and including Sunday February 2, 2014. The festival’s Official Selection includes some 220 feature films and 320 short films out of 60 countries.

IFFR reveals festival films and other programme news twice a week on the festival website. For a sneak preview of the first competition films, please see http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/en/iffr-2014/tiger-teasers