Presented by Festival du nouveau cinéma (FNC),Sticky Rice Magazine
Tiger Stripes
Directed by Amanda Nell Eu
Official selection
Critic's Week - Cannes Film Festival 2023
Sydney Film Festival 2023
Honors
Grand Prize Critic's Week - Cannes Film Festival 2023
Director
Amanda Nell Eu
Writer
Amanda Nell Eu
Cast
Deena Ezral, Piqa, Zafreen Zairizal
contact
Films Boutique
Official website
“Truly growls in its depiction of the brutal nature of girl friendship and the shock of the menstrual metamorphosis”– Fionnuala Halligan, SCREEN DAILY
“An audacious parable... insolent and vibrant”– Fabien Lemercier, CINEUROPA
The first amongst her tight-knit group of friends to hit puberty, 12-year-old Zaffan (Zafreen Zairizal) can feel her body changing. In the small rural village in Malaysia where her life is structured around the strict rhythms of school and the rules of Muslim faith, this could become a problem… A terrifying problem. Soon, a panic spreads across town. A monster is rumoured to be roaming the woods. Zaffan, further ostracized by her peers for her nascent otherness, is pushed to the brink. She resorts to a radical solution: to accept the woman she is becoming and to embrace the animal within… and without.
The first Malaysian film to win the Grand Prize at Cannes' Critics' Week, Amanda Nell Eu’s TIGER STRIPES is a delightful addition to the canon of feminist, body-horror-tinged coming-of-age films. Set to the pounding soundtrack of that perfect TikTok song, to the beat of a heart ready to burst out of its cage, to the sway of the trees in the humid jungle, Eu’s film is a striking debut showcasing an infectiously rebellious filmmaking spirit and that can-do DIY energy that comes once in a blue moon. Building on the folkloric monsters of her acclaimed short films, TIGER STRIPES pokes at the patriarchal strictures of Malaysian society, landing in the vicinity of works such as Julia Ducournau’s RAW and Kamila Andini’s YUNI (not to mention Canadian classic GINGER SNAPS) and further proving the subversive power of the monstrous feminine. – Ariel Esteban Cayer
Showings
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