‘Super punk rock in its Southeast Asian way’: first Malaysian woman filmmaker to compete at Cannes on her horror movie feature debut Tiger Stripes

Amanda Nell Eu’s Tiger Stripes, the first film by a Malaysian woman at the Cannes festival, will compete in the section where Wong Kar-wai was ‘discovered’

Nell Eu talks about why horror is ‘close to her heart’ and how the American punk scene has influenced her to make films with strong, ‘feared’ female characters

Reading Time:3 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

Amanda Nell Eu, the first Malaysian female director to have a film showing at the Cannes Film Festival, talks about her film “Tiger Stripes” and making “punk rock” horror films that empower women.

Marco Ferrarese

Published: 4:15pm, 21 Apr 2023Updated: 7:58am, 21 Dec 2023

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”.

A still from “Tiger Stripes”, which is getting its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival.

“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.”

You can expect a lot of feminist and empowerment messages in the film. I think that Tiger Stripes is fun

Amanda Nell Eu

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.