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.[3] The film was released in Malaysia censored, and the director has disowned the censored version of the film.[4]
Premise
Zaffan, an 11-year-old girl, starts to experience physical changes to her body when she is going through
puberty.
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.[7] The development of the film began in 2017.[8] 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.[9]
In April 2023, Jour2fête acquired its distribution rights in France.[14]
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.[4]
Critical reception
On the
review aggregator website
Rotten Tomatoes,
100% of 25 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.7 /10.[15]Metacritic, which uses a
weighted average, assigned the film a score of 67 out of 100, based on six critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[16]
Fionnuala Halligan of Screen International described the film as "a well observed, fiercely female-centred coming-of-age drama".[6] 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.[5]