Rotterdam Festival ends with a film about a village lingerie shop

The main Tiger award went to the Japanese film Rei, filmed in snowy Hokkaido.

The Rotterdam Film Festival for Debut, Auteur and Experimental Film has announced its winners, but screenings for audiences will continue for two more days. The official closing film was M. Raihan Halim’s Singaporean comedy Moon, about a lingerie store in a small village. The jury awarded the main prize “Tiger” to the Japanese debut film “Rei”, which amazed with the snowy landscapes of the island of Hokkaido.

“Moon” talks about how modern trends invade traditional life and change religious foundations. It comes down to police intervention. This is the second film in Rotterdam related to the village store. The first is the Georgian-Swiss “Thrush, Blackberry, Blackberry” by Elena Navereni, where the main character sells perfumes and household goods in a picturesque Georgian village.

The winners in the short film were: “Crazy Lotus” (Thailand), “Few Can See” (Ireland), “Working Wings” (Kosovo). The awards presentation took place in the middle of the festival, as soon as the jury had watched the entire short program. The ceremony was organized at the railway station, where a specially built pavilion operated during the festival. There, from early morning, sometimes from six o’clock, until late in the evening, short films were shown, but not in competition. Passengers entered the festival pavilion and watched films while standing. Some sat on the floor and had a picnic while waiting for the train. The curators of the festival conducted excursions to all film facilities at the station. In front of the entrance to the station they installed a large ball with the image of a tiger, which has preceded all sessions for many years.

The jury for the full-length competition included: festival producer Marco Müller, who headed the Venice Festival for several years, Bosnian-Dutch writer and director Ena Sendiarovic, who directed Sweet Dreams, American director and representative of the movement for independent black cinema Billy Woodberry, and his colleague from Hong Kong Herman Yau (“Ebola Syndrome,” “Mission to Moscow”) and producer Nadya Turintsev, who was born in Moscow, studied cultural anthropology in Paris, and began her career as an intern for Nikita Mikhalkov on the film “Dark Eyes.” She produced the documentaries “Mariupolis” and “Mariupolis 2” by the Lithuanian director and cameraman Mantas Kvedaravičius, who died in April 2022 in the vicinity of Mariupol, as well as the French film “The Insult” by Ziad Doueri, nominated for an Oscar. Nadya Turintsev was a member of the selection committee of the Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, was the art director of the Moscow International Film Festival, and recently founded her own film company in Paris.

The above-mentioned jury awarded the main award of the Tiger festival to the Japanese film “Rei” about a group of thirty-year-old people and their journey to the island of Hokkaido. The life of the main character is quite prosperous only at first glance. It would seem that there is no reason to worry, but much is hidden from prying eyes. The young director Tanaka Toshihiko was formerly a theater actor and studied business at the University of Michigan, but during the pandemic he became seriously interested in cinema and wrote a script. The first film is immediately the main competition of the Rotterdam festival, and now an award. The film captivated the jury and audience not only with the spiritual quest of the characters, but also with the fantastic snow-covered landscapes of the island of Hokkaido.

For many years in Rotterdam, three equal “Tigers” were awarded to the best films of the main competition. Now, in addition to one main prize, two special awards are awarded. The jury was the first to note the strange, in their opinion, Indian film “The Van of Kisses” by Midhun Murali, which reminded them of a fast train of loneliness, which, thanks to kisses, brings closer the moment of some kind of rehabilitation. Perhaps this is the most experimental of all the films presented in the competition, reminiscent of a shadow theater, black and white animation, the characters of which seem to be cut out of paper.

The second special jury prize was awarded to the debut Australian film “Headless” by Yeadon Martin, made at the intersection of fiction and documentary films. Its main character, a lonely elderly man, makes a nostalgic trip to the city of his childhood, where he has not been for more than 20 years. Along the way, he meets people who accept him as if they had known him all his life. The film starred non-professional actors, ordinary people who met during a crazy journey. All three winning films are in one way or another connected with the theme of the road that leads the heroes to discover new things about themselves and understand the world.