Amanda Nell Eu is about to make history as the first Malaysian female filmmaker to have a movie screened at Cannes.
Her feature film debut, Tiger Stripes, produced by Foo Fei Ling for Ghost Grrrl Pictures, will have its world premiere at the French film festival next month, where it will be in competition for the 62nd Critics’ Week Grand Prix award.
The Semaine de la Critique, which runs from May 17 to 25 this year, is one of the Cannes festival’s parallel programmes dedicated to first or second features by new filmmakers. It was where Mexican directors such as Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu and Guillermo Del Toro, and even Hong Kong’s Wong Kar-wai, were first “discovered”.
“It feels amazing and also unreal, but it’s very real! I’m so honoured to have our film premiere in Semaine de la Critique, it’s what the team and I have been dreaming of,” Nell Eu says in an interview with the Post.
She adds: “I don’t think anyone is going to be ready for this film because it is a real punch in the face.”
Work on Tiger Stripes started in 2018, but Nell Eu postponed shooting until last year because of Covid-19 restrictions.
After a difficult inception, the Malay-language teenage body horror will become the fourth Malaysian film to premiere at the French festival – and the first in 13 years – after 1995’s Kaki Bakar (The Arsonist) by U-Wei Haji Saari, Karaoke (2009) by Chris Chong Chan Fui and The Tiger Factory (2010) by Woo Ming Jin.
In Tiger Stripes, 12-year-old Muslim teenager Zaffan (played by Zafreen Zairizal) struggles with puberty until she discovers that her body is morphing in a terrifying way.
Rather than helping, her community provokes her and sets her aside until she realises the only way to get her freedom is by embracing her true self.
Nell Eu’s feature film – a co-production between Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Qatar – is a highly localised tale that focuses on female characters, like her earlier horror films.
Her short film debut, 2017’s Lagi Senang Jaga Sekandang Lembu (It’s Easier to Raise Cattle), dealt with the friendship between two teenage outcasts in a remote village and one’s discovery of the other’s secret. It premiered in competition at the Venice International Film Festival.Her second short film, Vinegar Baths (2018), is about an overworked maternity ward nurse who is most happy when she roams the hospital corridors at night and can finally eat.
Vinegar Baths won several festival awards, including best picture in the Scream Asia horror film festival’s shorts competition.
“Horror is extremely close to my heart and was the reason I was interested in cinema in the first place as a teen,” Nell Eu says. “Body horror especially appeals to me because the body can tell so many stories, from instinct to feelings, pain and pleasure.”
Besides horror, her new film also carries a powerful message of female empowerment – something that resonates in the name of production house Ghost Grrrl Pictures, as it hints at the feminist Riot Grrrl punk movement born in the 1990s in America’s Pacific northwest.
Co-founded by Nell Eu and Foo, the independent Malaysian production company focuses on female-centric stories from Southeast Asia to “represent strong, feared and misunderstood females in cinema – from colossal monsters to tough little girls who just cannot fit in”.
“The Riot Grrrl movement definitely inspired me as a young girl growing up, and you can expect a lot of feminist and empowerment messages in the film. I think that Tiger Stripes is fun and super punk rock in its own Southeast Asian way,” Nell Eu says.
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