This year’s Dragons and Tigers Award at VIFF went to the Philippine director John Torres for TODO TODO TEROS. This award is one of the most prestigious for Asian films. Many of today’s most renowned directors from the region, considered among the most significant figures of world cinema, were awarded this prize early in their career.
Winners have included Kore-eda Hirokazu (Maborosi, 1995), Hong Sang-Soo (The Day the Pig Fell Into the Well, 1996), Zhang Ming (Rainclouds Over Wushan, 1996), Lee Chang-Dong (Green Fish, 1997), and Jia Zhangke (Xiao Wu, 1998), Wataru Hayakawa (7/25 Nana Ni Go 1999), Wisit Sasanatieng (Tears of the Black Tiger, 2000), Ya-Chuan Hsiao (Mirror Image, 2001), Andrew Cheng (Shanghai Panic, 2002), Chugoku Shoichi (815, 2003), Xiao’er Gan (The only sons, 2003), Amir Muhammad (The big durian, 2004), Liu Jiayin (Ox Hide, 2005).
The acclaimed and controversial Thai director sensation, Apichatpong Weerasethakul who had also received special mention at the Dragons & Tigers competition years ago now returned to serve on this jury himself. His fellow jurors were Robert Koehler and Jessica Winter.
The jury expressed considerable enthusiasm toward this year’s winner: “A multi-dimensional manifesto on personal experience, filmmaking and life under difficult political conditions. This film shows that low-grade video can be art, while adopting an evocative, surprising approach to the issue of terrorism. And it's a dynamic and inventive assembly of footage as well as an energetic melding of the personal and the political.” John Torres, the winner, was no less enthusiastic in accepting the award.
The jury also singled out two other films for special mention:
FACELESS THINGS by KIM Kyong-Mook: “Many aspects of this film impressed us: its confrontational attitude, its personal, social and sexual dimensions, its sense of formal rigor, its reckless freedom and its fearless expression of a young gay man in today's Korea.”
GEO-LOBOTOMY by KIM Gok and KIM Sun: “We want to honor this as a mad-crazy movie with a rubbery sense of time and a terrific feeling of fun in the filmmaking process. The film has a strong relationship with the landscape and offers an original depiction of the relationships between characters in a small, dying town.”
Felicitas Becker