The 37th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), which runs between Jan. 23-Feb. 3, has announced the 15 films vying for the 2008 VPRO Tiger Awards. All entries are first or second efforts. (See Rotterdam 2008 Film Line-Up.)
The Tiger Awards are worth 15,000 euros (US$22,070) for each of three winning features and 3,000 euros (US$4,414) for the short film awards.
The 2008 Rotterdam film festival will open with the world premiere of Lucía Cedrón's narrative feature-film debut Cordero de Dios / Lamb of God (photo), about an elderly man kidnapped during Argentina's catastrophic economic crisis of 2002. The man's predicament forces his exiled daughter to return to Buenos Aires and confront her family's past, which also involves a late 1970s kidnapping — that one for political reasons.
According to Cedrón, Lamb of God is a "work of fiction that is related to things that happened to me. Even though the story is totally fictitious, the subject matter is something that is very close, deep, and painful."
Lucía's father, Jorge Cedrón, was the director of the clandestinely made and released 1973 political thriller Operación Masacre, about the state-sponsored 1956 massacre of civilian supporters of a counter-military coup. Cedrón was murdered — under still nebulous circumstances — in Paris, to where he had moved with his family after Argentina's military coup of the mid-1970s.
Lamb of God stars Mercedes Morán (above), Jorge Marrale, Leonora Balcarce, Malena Solda, Juan Minujín, and Ariana Morini.
Lucía Cedrón's quote: La Argentinidad … Al Palo