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Wednesday, May 31, 2023

With ‘Tiger Stripes’, Amanda Nell Eu roars at Cannes


FMT:

With ‘Tiger Stripes’, Amanda Nell Eu roars at Cannes


The acclaimed director shares her experience and hopes following her recent Critics’ Week win, a milestone for Malaysian film.



Malaysian director Amanda Nell Eu (far left) with the cast of ‘Tiger Stripes’ at the Cannes Film Festival. (Commas PR pic)


PETALING JAYA: A Malaysian film that made history by being the first to be featured at the Cannes Film Festival has gone on to achieve another feat that truly exemplifies the spirit of Malaysia Boleh!

“Tiger Stripes”, the debut feature by local filmmaker Amanda Nell Eu, won the Grand Prix at the 62nd Cannes Critics’ Week on Friday.

In addition to being the first Malaysian film to win the top prize at Cannes Critics Week, “Tiger Stripes” was the first Southeast Asian film to do so.

The Malay-language horror flick tells of a girl who hits puberty and discovers her body is changing in terrifying ways. It’s a work critics have compared with Julia Ducournau’s “Raw”, which won the French director the award in 2016.

Speaking with FMT from Nice in France, she said it was “surreal” to have won the Grand Prix.

“We never expected this!” she said. “I already felt like we won simply by being in competition, but this is just incredible.”


The film won great praise at Cannes, with jury president Audrey Diwan calling it ‘irreverent and uncompromising’. (IMDb pic)


At the festival, Eu had not expected “Tiger Stripes” to wow the judges; instead, she had been ready to cheer on the other contenders.

“But when Sundance programmer Kim Yutani mentioned the words ‘transformation’ and ‘animal energy’, my heart leapt and I wanted to burst out crying,” she recalled.

Eu said her phone has not stopped ringing since her big win, with family and friends eager to congratulate her.

This achievement is bigger than herself, though: she believes it bodes well for the future of Malaysian cinema – proving that local films have what it takes to succeed on the world stage – and for Asian cinema as a whole.

She’s also optimistic about what it means for collaborations between local studios and their foreign counterparts. “Tiger Stripes”, for example, involved Malaysian actors and crew members from up to eight countries.

She hopes her win contributes towards the fostering of international ties and shows the merit of such collaborations.




That said, while awards are one way for the door of opportunity to open, Eu pointed out that “it’s not as simple as being approached with offers”.

“Projects take time,” she stressed. Case in point: “Tiger Stripes” took up five years of her life and, now that the clock is reset, all she can do is wait and see what the future will bring.

“With a first feature, you have a lot to prove, to convince people you can execute such an ambitious project as ‘Tiger Stripes’,” she mused.

“But then my next film will have to be more ambitious, I think. I don’t know why I like to torture myself like this!”

Whatever she embarks on next, Eu said it would have to be a “new beast” – although whether the pun was intentional or not isn’t clear.


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