The International Film Festival Rotterdam (Jan 23-Feb 3) has selected the first three films for its VPRO Tiger Awards Competition.

They are genre-bending autobiographical family project Waltz In Starlight by Shingo Wakagi (Japan); Pusan award winner Flower In The Pocket by Liew Seng Tat (Malaysia) about two motherless brothers; and another Pusan winner, Wonderful Town by Aditya Assarat (Thailand) about a love affair in a tsunami-ravaged village. The latter has recently been picked up by Memento Films for world sales.

The festival also confirms that it will host world premieres of:
Garing Nugroho's Teak Leaves At The Temples (Indonesia)
Stephen Dwoskin's The Sun And The Moon (UK)
Xiaolu Guo's We Went To Wonderland (UK)
Jeff Pickett's The Skyjacker (US)
Sun Koh's Lucky 7 (Singapore) - collaboration with K Rajagopal, Boo Junfeng, Brian Gothong Tan, Chew Tze Chuan, Ho Tzu Nyen and Tania Sng and
Mirjam van Veelen's Megumi (The Netherlands)

The Filmmaker in Focus retrospective will be honoring Russia's Svetlana Proskurina, including the international premiere of her latest film, The Best Time Of The Year. As previously reported, Rotterdam will also pay tribute to Robert Breer and Cameron Jamie.

Rotterdam's full programme will be announced in mid January.

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