The International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) announced the winners of the 2026 Tiger Short Competition, in which three films received Tiger Short Awards, each carrying a prize of €5,000. From the 22 titles in competition, the jury selected The Second Skin (USA, Mexico) by Mariia Lapidus; The Apple Doesn’t Fall… (China) by Dean Wei; and Ndjimu (Deep Cobalt) (Democratic Republic of the Congo, USA) by Petna Ndaliko Katondolo.

In addition, CUL-DE-SAC ! (Belgium, France), directed by Clyde Gates and Gabriel Sanson, was chosen as the festival’s candidate to compete for the European Short Film Award at the European Film Awards. Meanwhile, a jury from the Circle of Dutch Film Journalists (KNF) presented the 2026 KNF Award to The Apple Doesn’t Fall…, further establishing the Chinese film as one of the standout titles of this year’s edition.

The awards were announced during a ceremony held at the cultural venue WORM, a regular hub for festival activities. The Tiger Short Competition jury consisted of artist and filmmaker Sammy Baloji — who won the Special Jury Prize in the Tiger Competition at IFFR 2025 for L’arbre de l’authenticité — visual artist Anka Gujabidze, whose debut film Temo Re received both the Tiger Short Award and the KNF Award in 2025, and Jukka-Pekka Laakso, director of the Tampere Film Festival since 2002.

On The Second Skin, the jury commented that “this is a film that truly succeeds, in its relentless and uncompromising way, in leading the viewer to the reality of womanhood, experiencing the hellish acts of violence and rape.” Regarding The Apple Doesn’t Fall…, they noted that it “has a truly cinematic quality that naturally blends and uses different forms of storytelling, creatively and without words emphasising the social constraints that are imposed on us, leading to performative lives that are full of boredom and misunderstanding.” About Ndjimu (Deep Cobalt), the jury stated that it “is a film about invisible people, literally people hidden underground. People who produce materials that our affluent world runs on. Amazing images from the mines in Katanga show something we know, but perhaps understand now a bit better.”

As for CUL-DE-SAC !, nominated by the jury for the European award, the assessment was equally enthusiastic: “This is a film with a remarkable cinematographic quality; economical storytelling, not without humour or metaphor; and criticism of the system.”

The KNF Award was decided by a jury composed of Fritz de Jong, Navid Nikkhah-Azad and Timna Rauch, who considered The Apple Doesn’t Fall… to be exemplary of what a great short film can achieve. According to their statement, the film “cleverly plays with both the abstract and the narrative, the theatrical and the cinematic. It conveys a strong message, comments on society, politics and perhaps even film itself. And it made very economical use of time: it elaborated just enough to surprise us, it never felt rushed and in under twenty minutes this film made us think, wonder, doubt and made us laugh.”