In Francis Ford Coppola’s footsteps: Malaysian winners of Fipresci Prize at Locarno film festival on their art-house film Stone Turtle

Stone Turtle, about a woman who illegally sells turtle eggs on a Malaysian island, is the first movie in the Bahasa Malaysia language to win the Fipresci Prize

Director Woo Ming Jin and producer Edmund Yeo talk about their time-loop revenge thriller, and how shooting it was a return to the ‘simple joys of filmmaking’

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Asmara Abigail in a still from Stone Turtle, winner of the Fipresci Prize at the Locarno film festival.

Published: 1:21pm, 17 Aug 2022Updated: 5:14pm, 17 Aug 2022

A Malaysian film, Stone Turtle, bagged the coveted Fipresci Prize at the 75th edition of the Locarno Film Festival which concluded on August 14. It was the first time a feature filmed in the Bahasa Malaysia language had competed in the main category of the prestigious Swiss festival.

The Fipresci prize jury wrote on the festival’s official Twitter page that the time-loop revenge thriller impressed them for the “multiplicity of perspectives on urgent themes such as violence against women, the question of who has a right to citizenship, and the way we deal with our natural environment”.

“The Fipresci Prize by the International Federation of Film Critics is one of the most historical and prestigious awards available in many of the world’s most important film festivals,” Greenlight Pictures producer Edmund Yeo – himself a director, whose latest feature is 2021’s Moonlight Shadow – tells the Post.

Stone Turtle is also co-produced by Cheng Thim Kian and Yulia Evina Bhara of KawanKawan Media in Indonesia.

Stone Turtle [Teaser Trailer]

“The award is a great honour,” says Yeo. “Locarno Film Fest has been handing out the Fipresci Prize since 1958, and many of the great filmmakers I’ve admired, such as Francis Ford Coppola, Edward Yang and Lav Diaz, received it here before us.”