Igor Bezinović’s Croatian docu-drama Fiume O Morte! has won the Tiger award of the 2025 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). IFFR’s Tig
Igor Bezinović’s Croatian docu-drama Fiume O Morte! has won the Tiger award of the 2025 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).
IFFR’s Tiger competition celebrates up-and-coming filmmakers, with a €40,000 prize. Fiume O Morte! also won the Fipresci award.
Bezinović’s Croatia-Italy-Slovenia co-production is set in his home city once known as Fiume, now Rijeka in Croatia. The area has been laid claim to by a variety of nations since the First World War. It fuses documentary with dramatic reconstructions, from the aid of locals, to interrogate the city’s past and present.
The jury said: “While it is a playful and mischievous film, it presents a mirror to our present day.
“Recourse to ultra nationalism, and even fascism, resides in the core of national identity, it is already inside of us as a form of knowledge we should be afraid to forget, and continuously need to process in order to forgo its grip.”
Winners of the special jury awards, worth €10,000 each, were Sammy Baloji’s film essay L’Arbre De l’Authenticité, that looks at the Democratic Republic of Congo’s colonial history, and Tim Ellrich’s Im Haus Meiner Eltern, a German black and white-shot drama that explores the toil of caregiving on families.
The Tiger competition jury consisted of Yuki Aditya, Winnie Lau, Peter Strickland and Andrea Luka Zimmerman. The jury also initially included The Seed Of The Sacred Fig star Soheila Golestani.
However she was unable to attend and participate due to a travel ban which prevented her leaving Iran.
The Big Screen competition crosses popular, classic and arthouse cinema, and is dedicated to supporting the distribution of nominated films in the Netherlands. The winning filmmaker was awarded €15,000 in prize money, while IFFR also offers €15,000 to the Dutch distributor that acquires the film’s distribution rights, to incentivise local distribution.
Jon Blåhed’s Raptures was this year’s Big Screen winner. It the first film to be made using the minority language Meänkieli. The Swedish-Finnish co-production is the story of Christian woman trapped in her husband’s sectarian movement who quietly fights to protect her family from his bizarre and increasingly perilous worldview.
The jury said: “Driven by a complex leading role, the film is stunningly shot, literally composing its own language. A film that asks painful questions that were relevant almost a century ago and, as it turns out, are even more relevant today.”
The jury consisted of Bero Beyer, Dewi Reijs, Jia Zhao, Sara Rajaei and Digna Sinke.
Industry prizes were announced on Wednesday (February 5), with Georgian director Uta Beria’s Tear Gas winning two of the nine IFFR Pro prizes.
The winner of the audience award is announced tomorrow (February 8).
IFFR 2025 winners
Tiger Competition award
Fiume o morte! (Cro-It-Slovenia) dir. Igor Bezinović
Special jury awards
L’arbre De l’Authenticité (DR Congo) dir. Sammy Baloji
Im Haus Meiner Eltern (Ger) dir. Tim Ellrich
Big Screen award
Raptures (Swe-Fin) dir. Jon Blåhed
Fipresci award
Fiume o morte! (Cro-It-Slovenia) dir. Igor Bezinović
Neptac award
Bad Girl (India) dir. Varsha Bharath
Youth jury award
The Visual Feminist Manifesto (Syria-Leb-Ger-Swe-Neth) dir. Farida Baqi
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