Danis Tanovic’s Tigers wins backing from former Nestle assistant VP

Academy award winning director Danis Tanovic speaks at the Qumra Master Class during the inaugural edition of Qumra, a new industry event by the Doha Film Institute dedicated to the development of emeShow more

The Oscar-winning Bosnian director Danis Tanovic has won some high profile support for his film Tigers, which screened at December's DIFF. The film deals with the morally questionable actions of multinational food companies in Pakistan, and Tanovic hopes to raise public awareness through his movie.

We bumped into Tanovic at this weeks’ Doha Qumra event, where the director revealed that Yasmin Motarjemi, the former assistant vice president in charge of food safety at Nestle, the world’s largest food company, had given the film her backing at last week’s International Festival of Films on Human Rights in Geneva.

Tanovic revealed that Motarjemi told him the film highlights “exactly the sort of reasons” that she had been driven out of Nestle. Motarjemi was dismissed from her post in 2010 after she had made numerous complaints about food safety concerns at the company to no avail, and is currently suing the corporation for harassment.

Following her dismissal, Motarjemi began working as a public health activist and was the editor of 2014's The Encyclopedia of Food Safety.