Acclaim for Ah Liberty!

Ben Rivers’ 2007 LAFVA-funded film Ah Liberty! has been awarded the Tiger Award for Short Film at this year’s International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR).

Ah Liberty!, which also received its world premiere at Rotterdam, is an impressionistic portrait of a remote spot in an overwhelming landscape where a family lives life to the full in all its rough aspects.

The award jury praised Rivers’ latest work for ‘its compassion, its refusal of the sentimental, its quick witted montage and dramaturgy of the everyday’. Two other Tiger Awards for Short Film went to As I Lay Dying by Ho Yuhang (Malaysia) and Observando el cielo by Jeanne Liotta (US).

This is the fourth year that the Tiger Awards for Shorts have been presented, with twenty films, of up to 60 minutes, in competition.

Previous LAFVA awardees Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy (Desperate Optimists) also triumphed at the awards, picking up the UIP Rotterdam Short Film Nominee for the European Film Award, for their short film Joy. The Prix UIP awards a €2,000 prize as well as nomination for the European Film Awards.

More information on the IFFR can be found via the festival website.