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Tiger Stripes (film)

Tiger Stripes is a 2023 Malay-language body horror film written and directed by Amanda Nell Eu in her directorial debut.

Tiger Stripes had its world premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 2023 where it won the Critics' Week Grand Prize. An international co-production of eight countries including Malaysia, the film was selected as the Malaysian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 96th Academy Awards. The film was released in Malaysia censored, and the director has disowned the censored version of the film.

Premise

Zaffan, an 11-year-old girl, starts to experience physical changes to her body when she is going through puberty.

Cast

Zafreen Zairizal as Zaffan
Deena Ezral as Farah
Piqa as Mariam
Shaheizy Sam as Dr. Rahim, snake-oil exorcist
June Lojong as Munah
Khairunazwan Rodz
Fatimah Abu Bakar as headteacher

Production

The film is an international co-production project involving eight countries, including Weydemann Bros from Berlin, Germany, Foo Fei Ling of Ghost Grrrl Pictures from Malaysia, Fran Borgia of Akanga Film Asia from Singapore, and Yulia Evina Bhara of KawanKawan Media from Indonesia. The development of the film began in 2017. During its production, Tiger Stripes had collected seven project development credits, including Open Doors Locarno Festival, Network of Asian Fantastic Films, Talents Tokyo, NMSP Project Development Fund, Hubert Bals Fund Bright Future, Less Is More event, and SEAFIC Lab.

Release

The film had its world premiere at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival on 17 May 2023. It won the award for Critics' Week Grand Prize. It also competed in the Official selection at the 56th Sitges Film Festival, and served as the closing film of 2023 Jakarta Film Week.

In April 2023, Jour2fête acquired its distribution rights in France.

In Malaysia, the film was released on 19 October 2023 only after it had been censored, which prompted the director to disown the film, saying that the released film was not the film that she made and won the prize in Cannes.

Critical reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 96 % of 55 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.8 /10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 68 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

Fionnuala Halligan of Screen International described the film as "a well observed, fiercely female-centred coming-of-age drama". Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian rated the film with three stars out of five and praised Nell Eu's direction and the younger cast's performances.