Tiger Stripes is a 2023 independentbody horror[2] film written and directed by Amanda Nell Eu in her directorial debut, starring Zafreen Zarizai, Deena Ezral and Piqa with Shaheizy Sam, June Lojong, Khairunazwan Rodz and Fatimah Abu Bakar in supporting roles. The film's plot follows an 11-year-old Zaffan whose body begins to undergo unsettling changes upon hitting puberty.
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.
Summary
Zaffan dances in the school washroom while her friend records her. As she does, she takes her clothes off.
Zaffan is taking an interest in adult things: she wears a bra, and draws sexual things in her notebook. Soon, she gets her period. Zaffan does not attend prayer time at school as she is on her period and does not need to pray, and her friends find out that she got her period. Zaffan's friends warn her about woman named Ina, who became wild because of her menstruation, and began living in the jungle. They also say that menstruation is gross. Shortly after, Zaffan begins seeing a woman with searing pink eyes, living high up in the trees.
On a class camping trip, all the girls avoid Zaffan because they know she has a period now. But Zaffan is praised by her teachers, because she finds her missing classmate hiding high up in a tree.
Zaffan's friends are influenced by the way their community stigmatizes menstruation. They start bullying her for having a period, beating her up and calling her a "slut". Zaffan is struggling: her skin is breaking out, her hands are growing claws, and she is losing her hair. Zaffan wears modest clothing and gloves to cover her strange appearance, but it doesn't hide her evil energy. Zaffan kills several animals with her bare hands and climbs trees in the jungle. Her eyes sometimes turn pink. Even when she appears to be normal, students who interact with her in class start breaking out in hysterical fits.
After a few fights with her mother about her behaviour, Zaffan runs away from home, but keeps going to school. An exorcist is hired by the school to cure Zaffan of her rebellious behaviour. He sprays her with water, and gets his assistants to beat her. At the height of her anger, she transforms into a hybrid of a human and a tiger. A mob exiles her to the jungle.
Zaffan's friends come to play and live with her in the jungle, signifying that they have begun menstruating. Mariam scratches and wounds Farah's leg, showing that she too has started turning into a tiger.
Zaffan dances in the jungle river in her underclothes while her friend records her. She is finally having fun again, as she was before puberty began.
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]
It was also invited at the 29th Busan International Film Festival in 'Special program in focus' Teenage Minds, Teenage Movies section and it will be screened in October 2024.[15]
Critical reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 97% of 60 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.9/10.The website's consensus reads: "A clever and stylish riff on the body horror that is puberty, Tiger Stripes is an exuberant allegory for personal agency as well as an impressive debut for writer-director Amanda Nell Eu."[16]Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 68 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[17]
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]
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