Japanese debut ‘Rei’ leads winners at 2024 Rotterdam film festival

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'Rei'

Source: IFFR

‘Rei’

Toshihiko Tanaka’s Rei won the top prize at the 2024 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), taking home the €40,000 Tiger award at tonight’s closing ceremony (February 2).

The Japanese actor’s three-hour directorial debut explores human connection through a thirtysomething woman who embarks on a journey through the mountains and meets a deaf photographer. Tanaka also stars and produced the film which used mostly non-professionals and students in the cast and crew.

The jury, which included former IFFR director Marco Müller, said of the film: “[Tanaka’s] strength relies on a collaborative environment centred on the actors, an attention to the power of recitation – and, perhaps most importantly, a taste for performative sequences that operate as discrete units within the overall structure, but which typically resist acting as the power of the different chosen locations slowly emerges.”

Also sitting on the jury was Bosnian-Dutch filmmaker Ena Sendijarević, producer Nadia Turincev, Hong Kong filmmaker Herman Yau, and director Billy Woodberry.

Special jury awards of €10,000 each were given to Midhun Murali’s Kiss Wagon, an Indian thriller which uses mixed media to investigate power and religion; and Jaydon Martin’s Flathead, an Australian debut combining fiction and documentary to explore blue-collar life.

Kiss Wagon also received the Fipresci prize for a film that “astounded” the jury with “epic superhero storytelling and its bold defying of cinematic conventions”.

Other awards

The VRPO Big Screen award was presented to Oktay Baraheni’s The Old Bachelor, an Iranian drama about two middle-aged brothers living with their abusive father. Baraheni and the film’s distributor receive a €30,000 prize as well as a guaranteed theatrical release in the Netherlands and a broadcast on Dutch TV by VPRO and NPO.

Of their selection, the jury said: “Exploring powerful themes of patriarchy, misogyny, love, violence and tragedy, this film is a masterclass in storytelling, through its gripping, nuanced dialogue, exquisite attention to detail and its development of tension, which simmers throughout the film until it reaches boiling point in the final, explosive act.”

Making up the Big Screen Competition jury were Samina Khan, Sylvie de Leeuwe, Lisa van der Loos, Marcos Silva and Ella de Bruijn.

The Neptac award for best Asian feature film went to Ishan Shukla’s sci-fi animation Schirkoa: In Lies We Trust while the Youth Jury award was presented to Lillah Halla’s abortion drama Levante.

Industry prizes were announced earlier this week with Polish animation project Cherub triumphing at the CineMart co-production market.

The audience award will be announced on Sunday (February 4) as the festival closes.