ifs-Begegnung: Gender & Diversity mit »Tiger Stripes«

In the organizer's words:

ifs Encounter: Gender & Diversity with "Tiger Stripes"

Wednesday, February 05, 2025 | 7 pm
Free admission
Filmforum NRW | Cinema at the Museum Ludwig
Bischofsgartenstr. 1 | 50667 Cologne

ON THE BIG SCREEN:

"Tiger Stripes"
(Feature film, TW / SG / FR / DE / NL / ID / QA 2023, 95 min, Director: Amanda Nell Eu, Original with German and English subtitles)

Followed by a film talk with Foo Fei Ling, film producer Tiger Stripes and founder of Ghost Grrrl Pictures, moderated by Dr. Maxa Zoller (Artistic Director IFFF Dortmund+Cologne)

The discussion will be held in English.

"Tiger Stripes" is a feminist horror film from Malaysia and the first Cannes award for a Malaysian female director.
Amanda Eu's debut film, which won the Grand Prix at the 2024 Semaine de la Critique, tells the story of 12-year-old Zaffan's transformation from a lively teenager into a tiger roaming the woods at night. The reason for this metamorphosis: one day, Zaffan began to bleed. The strict girls' school, a supposed shaman and even her friends try - in vain - to reverse Zaffan's powers and tame the tiger inside her. The story of a teenager confronted with growing up and the subsequent stigmatization by a conservative society is told with fantastic means in "Tiger Stripes", without losing any of its socio-critical power.

The horror genre is particularly popular with young female cineastes. Recently in particular, more and more female directors have been using this genre to tell stories of oppression and empowerment. In this sense, "Tiger Stripes" follows the tradition of the Indonesian film "Marlina, the Murderer in Four Acts", a rape-revenge horror film and the first film by a female director from Southeast Asia to be nominated for the Directors' Fortnight Award in Cannes. The short film "Washhh" by Mickey Lai from Malaysia was also awarded Locarno's Pardino d'Oro in 2024. What is it about Southeast Asian cinema, horror and menstruation? How are cultural aspects of Malaysia in terms of ethnicity, religion, oral history and myth narratives interwoven in and with this genre? We will discuss these and other questions about contemporary developments in Asian cinema with co-producer Foo Fei Ling after the film.

Foo Fei Ling is a film producer from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She is a graduate of Berlinale Talents, Rotterdam Lab and EAVE Ties That Bind. She has been involved in many independent films in Malaysia since 2008. Her production work includes "If It's Not Now, Then When?" (James Lee, 2012) and "Voyage to Terengganu" (Amir Muhammad and Badrul Hisham Ismail, 2016). In 2019, she and writer and director Amanda Nell Eu founded Ghost Grrrl Pictures, a film company that produces women-centered stories from the Southeast Asian region.

For the public event series "ifs-Begegnung" Gender & Diversity, ifs Internationale Filmschule Köln and Internationales Frauen Film Fest Dortmund+Köln have joined forces to raise awareness of the work of female filmmakers in the cultural sector and at film schools. In order to stimulate discussion on the subject of gender and diversity, selected feature and documentary films as well as experimental works are regularly screened and their makers introduced in a subsequent discussion.