South African filmmaking duo Jason Jacobs and Devon Delmar are the winners of the Tiger Award for Best Competition Film at the 2026 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), for their drama, Variations on a Theme.
By Vivian Nneka Nwajiaku
South African filmmaking duo Jason Jacobs and Devon Delmar are the winners of the Tiger Award for Best Competition Film at the 2026 International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR), for their drama, Variations on a Theme. The Tiger Award is the festival’s top prize aimed at “discovering, raising the profile of and rewarding up-and-coming international film talent” and is worth €40,000.
A co-production of South Africa, the Netherlands, and Qatar, the drama follows the grandmother of co-director Jason Jacobs, Ouma Hettie, an elderly goat herder in South Africa’s Kamiesberge, who is drawn into a scam offering overdue reparations for her father’s unpaid wartime service.
The jury statement reads: “Possessing a deep poetic language, we found this to be a thoughtful and moving portrait of a community living under the spectre of colonial legacies and familial bonds in this world and the next.”
Variations on a Theme is the second feature by Jacobs and Delmar, following their debut, Carissa, a fiction feature which premiered in the Orizzonti section of the 2024 Venice International Film Festival 2024. Carissa was listed among the special mentions on Afrocritik’s Remarkable African Feature Films of 2025.
The 55th International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) is ongoing in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, running from 29th January to 8th February 2026.