08/01/2014 - Competition includes films by Turner prize-winner Laure Prouvost and new co-directorial effort from director of EFA laureate Hanoi-Warsaw

The International Film Festival Rotterdam has announced the 24 short films which will compete for the top short film prizes. This year’s festival includes a number of eagerly awaited shorts each of which promises to push the boundaries of the moving image and go beyond ideas of traditional narrative cinema.

High amongst them will be La Isla by Dominga Sotomayor & Katarzyna Klimkiewicz (Chile- Poland), a work that promises to be an intensely visual and abstract drama about a family who gather for a reunion. Klimkiewicz’s short Hanoi/Warsaw was very successful on the festival circuit a few years ago, where it went on to win a European Film Award. The competition will also see UK film Grandma’s Dream directed by Laure Prouvost, the winner of the 2013 Turner Prize and French-Chilean-US co-production The Voice Thief directed by Adan Jodorowsky, son of legendary filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. There will also be new films from the Netherlands, Finland, France and Spain.

The jury consists of two-time Tiger Award winner Mati Diop (France), art historian and curator Bart Rutten (Netherlands), and filmmaker and visual artist Mika Taanila (Finland). Each of the three equal Canon Tiger Awards for Short Films comes with 3,000 euros plus a video camera. The jury also nominates one film that will compete in the short film category of the annual European Film Awards (EFA).

The 24 films in competition form part of the Tiger and Spectrum shorts which will see 207 shorts and mid-length features screened during the festival between January, Thursday 23 and Monday 27.  The full schedule of shorts will be announced on January 15 on the website of the event.