The film Three Tidy Tigers Tied a Tie Tighter, directed by Brazilian director Gustavo Vinagre, recently won the Teddy Award for Best Feature Film.

The movie tells the story of three young queer people living in São Paulo, Brazil that face the emergence of a virus that affects the brain and the ability to remember. Amid this situation, the characters are forced to go through complicated circumstances, such as unemployment, uncertainty about a better future and close HIV experiences. 

The project began to take shape before COVID-19, and was developed little by little amid COVID-19. Finally, it premiered in the Forum section of the Berlin International Film Festival.

Vinagre is a well-known filmmaker at Berlinale, where he previously presented Fucking Different São Paulo (2010), A Rosa Azul de Novalis (2019) and Vil, Má (2020).

The director did not attend physically to the last Teddy’s ceremony award in Berlin, but he did tune in online from Brazil. Upon learning of his victory, he delivered a speech in which he thanked his cast and sarcastically dedicated the award to the current president of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, whose management of the pandemic was full of controversy.

“This is a movie about memory. It is very important that we do not forget the way in which Bolsonaro made fun of the pandemic when in Brazil we already had 600,000 deaths. He made people doubt the vaccine and recommended fake medications. We do not forget the way he talked about black people and people of the LGBTQ+ community,” he noted.

He also said that Brazil is the country with the highest murder rate of LGBTQ+ individuals in the whole world, and demanded urgent justice for the victims. 

Alis was the other Latin American film awarded in the Teddy Awards. It is a Colombian-Chilean and Romanian production, directed by the Colombian filmmakers Clare Weiskopf and Nicolás van Hemelryck, which won the Crystal Bear in the Generation 14plus category. 

This documentary is focused on the story of young people who live on the streets, and relay their past and future through an imaginary partner: Alis.

The Teddy Awards have been presented for 36 years at the Berlin International Film Festival. They have been created to highlight productions that make homosexuality and transsexuality visible in search of greater parity and equality in society.