The shadow of the murdered director Theovan Gogh is hanging over this year's Rotterdam Film Festival (Jan 26-Feb 6).

A new prize, the GoldenCactus Theo van Gogh Award for Maverick Filmmakers, was awarded on Sunday toIlya Khrzhavonsky for his subversive feature 4, which has been banned by Russian censors.

The award was introduced tohonor the "quirky, maverick spirit" of the murdered Dutch director.

The ceremony took placebefore the theatrical premiere of TheSixth of May, the last feature film van Gogh finished before he wasassassinated.

Meanwhile, a last minuteproject has been added to IFFR's CineMart. Called Triple Theo, the project is looking to remake three early films byvan Gogh in English. Van Gogh's regular Dutch producer Column Production islooking for foreign partners for 1-900,Blind Date and Interview.

The idea is to shoot thefilms with the same crew that the murdered director used to work with. Columnis aiming for 'Van Gogh style' films; most of the director's features were shotwith a digital camera, a very tight production schedule and a short number ofshooting days.

Besides the three remakes,Column is also looking at making a new original feature that van Gogh wasplanning to shoot next month. Called Bad,it is about two bisexual girls spending the night together before theirfriendship comes to an end.

Also on Sunday, a centerpieceof the Rotterdam festival was Sunday's Film Parliament debate 'Courage andConviction: Filmmaking in an age of turbulence', in which various filmmakersdebated the rights and responsibilities of filmmakers in the wake of Dutchdirector van Gogh's murder last November.