A young woman isolated in a country estate grapples with reality, memory, and imagination after a tragic event.
Set against the backdrop of a large country estate, The Accident unfolds as a family drama, threaded with the suspense of a psychological thriller. The story follows Charlotte, a young woman grappling with the aftermath of a devastating loss. Isolated in her home, she begins to notice strange occurrences that blur the lines between reality, memory, and imagination. It is in navigating this fractured terrain of trauma that Charlotte’s emotional journey takes shape, forming the heart of the story.
The estate itself—a grand house with the farther’s room room at its core—along with the expanse of nature that envelops it, emerges as more than mere backdrop. It works as active forces and projections of the heroine’s fractured subjectivity. The stillness of the trees, the solidity of the earth, and the rhythms of nature become her companions in isolation, offering a fragile sense of grounding as she struggles to reconnect with the world. Charlotte’s bond with her brother provides a glimmer of stability, but a violent incident upends their fragile connection.
When the police intervene, Charlotte is forced to confront the stark truth of her trauma she has long suppressed. Will Charlotte find the freedom and solace she yearns for, or will she remain a prisoner of her grief? The Accident is less a film about trauma than a meditation on its reverberations, the film lingers in that delicate space between despair and redemption, posing an unspoken question: Can we ever truly escape the shadows of our past?


Best Short Film (Main Category)
Best Original Screenplay (Main Category)
Best Actress (Main Category)
Best Screenwriter Debut (Additional Category)
Best Supporting Actor (Additional Category)


Directed by: Thierry Obadia

A couple celebrates their fifth anniversary, but something isn't right. The love that was so strong back then, five years ago, has now seemingly vanished. What happened? Can the relationship be salvaged?


Best Short Film (Main Category)
Best Original Screenplay (Main Category)


Directed by: Anton Svantesson-Helkiö

A brother and a sister unable to confess a secret.
A mother who blames them for their ingratitude and absence.
A dysfunctional medical-assistance robot.
Lunch is served, bon appétit !


Best Short Film (Main Category)


Directed by: Hakim Atoui

In a crumbling world where climate crisis, human trafficking, child abduction, and the ruthless greed of urbanization intersect, one forgotten elderly soul during pandemic 2020 becomes a mirror to humanity’s downfall.
This surreal, dystopian yet poetic cinematic journey dives deep into themes of displacement, ecological destruction, and the profound loneliness that festers in a society obsessed with artificial connections and material gain.
The story follows an elderly person abandoned amidst the neon lights of urban prosperity. Their isolation gradually turns into a haunting symbol of collective loss — showing how, in the name of progress, we are losing everything: rivers, forests, livelihoods, homes, families, identities, and our very dignity.
This film serves not just as a cautionary tale, but also as an elegy — a quiet reminder of what we are letting vanish forever.
This film blends elements of poetic realism, social commentary, and dystopian allegory to evoke deep reflection.


Best Feature Film (Main Category)
Best Covid-19 Film (Additional Category)
Best Director Debut (Additional Category)


Directed by: Mitra Mazumder

What is a myth? What is a legend? What is a story, a fable, a lore? Something to ponder forevermore. Hearing chatter and gossip. Hearing light whispers leaving sensual lips. They are doing this, they are doing that. They say this happened at night. They say that happened on this fateful day. All these rumors and old wives' tales. That what they say. Whispers coming from the underground. Riding the wind saying something that might be profound.


Best Experimental Film (Main Category)
Best AI Film (Additional Category)
Best Sound Design (Additional Category)
Best Trailer (Additional Category)


Directed by: Tremayne LaMont

Trapped in an elevator with nowhere to run, one man’s body becomes the target of his mother-in-law’s terrifying black magic revenge. Chris must face the consequences of a family tragedy that's spawned something far more sinister.


Best Experimental Film (Main Category)
Best Cinematography (Main Category)


Directed by: Rosaicela Enríquez Santillán

A man suffers loss and defies the laws of nature in an attempt to win back his lost love.
However, things go sideways when the woman he gets back doesn’t quite function like an ordinary woman.
She gives birth to a new man, and our first man regrets everything and wants to kill this new creation.
This is yet another violation of the laws of nature, and the woman takes power and kills both men.


Best Experimental Film (Main Category)


Directed by: Frida M. Martinsen

It is a documentary about the making of a music video 'What About Me' which is a dedication to the true victims of war - The children


Best Short Documentary Film (Main Category)


Directed by: Charles D'Alberto, Arianna Fiandrini, Mauro Magrini

The short film Palmento offers an intimate look into the winemaking traditions of Sicily’s Mount Etna region, focusing on the ancient practice of using palmenti—stone wine presses carved into volcanic rock. These structures, dating back centuries, are a testament to the island's deep-rooted viticultural heritage. The film explores how these traditional presses, once widespread across the slopes of Etna, were integral to the local wine production process, allowing generations of winemakers to ferment and press grapes in harmony with nature.
In modern times, the traditional use of Palmenti has been outlawed by governmental agencies and today a group of winemakers are fighting to protect an important winemaking heritage. The spectacular images of volcanic eruptions are all filmed by cinematographer and Etna local Giuseppe Distefano. The film is more than a documentary about wine. It's a meditation on cultural preservation in an age of globalization.


Best Short Documentary Film (Main Category)
Best Editing (Main Category)


Directed by: Christopher L Barnes

Between 2015 and 2024, Leonard Alecu filmed the melting icebergs off Greenland's East coast. Sailing dangerously close to icebergs, Alecu handled his camera to record the ice masses yielding to the ruthless ocean. Filmed in black and white, Ice Breath is a cinematic poem whose only elusive actor is the filmmaker's gaze. In 43 minutes, a sequence of flat pictures turn into dynamic tableaux, an existential journey from genesis to extinction. The hypnotic feature of the film is enhanced by the soundtrack Become Ocean, a haunting composition by John Luther Adams suggestive of a relentless tidal surge, of melting polar ice and rising sea levels. Become Ocean received critical acclaim, earning the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music and the 2015 Grammy for Best Classical Contemporary Composition. More than an environmental documentary, Ice Breath and Become Ocean is an experimental fusion exploring the vast, inscrutable meanings of climate change.


Best Feature Documentary Film (Main Category)
Best Cinematography (Main Category)
Best Director Debut (Additional Category)


Directed by: Leonard Alecu

She Walks a Line is a gripping documentary that reveals the harrowing journey of thousands of young Nepali women and girls who are coerced across the border into India each year.
Once across the notoriously porous 1,000-mile frontier, most are sold into the sex industry, forced into domestic servitude or subjected to organ and skin harvesting. This border has become one of the world's most prolific human trafficking routes.
Amidst international indifference, one Nepali woman, Shanta Sapkota, has taken a courageous stand to combat this humanitarian crisis. Driven by heartbreak and a fierce determination, she leads a team of female anti-human trafficking operatives at the Mahendranagar crossing, a critical checkpoint where the fate of many young lives hangs in
the balance.
This exclusively nonwhite, female-led documentary takes the audience deep into the heart of this mission. Through the eyes of rescuers, victims, and traffickers, we witness the raw
emotions, heart-wrenching struggles, and moments of triumph that define this battle against human trafficking.
At its core, She Walks a Line is a story of empowerment—of women fighting for justice, of traffickers manipulating the vulnerable, and of a divine calling that has inspired one woman
to stand her ground in the face of adversity. This film not only tells a story; it ignites a movement.


Best Feature Documentary Film (Main Category)


Directed by: TIMOTHY STUART LOVELL

„With the scientist’s brain, the poet’s heart and the painter’s eye”—this was the proverb of the Hungarian-American artist, educator, and impresario György Kepes, a forgotten precursor of media art. Kepes was among the first who used the term „visual culture” as an independent research subject in a contemporary sense. As the architect of the Light Workshop at the New Bauhaus/School of Design in Chicago in 1937 and as the founder and first director of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at MIT in 1967, Kepes’s enterprise was to fill the gap between the humanities and the sciences. The powerful new tools he offered to „intersee” and „intercommunicate” knowledge on a participatory basis proved to be the foundations of a program that defined the aesthetic agency of the ecological consciousness.
Can technology save us from technology? Can the self-serving fetishes of technological innovation be used to enhance the inner richness of the individual? Can prosthetics replace the lost pageantry of nature and be the substitute for a more sustainable, better world?
Márton Orosz’s documentary film is the first comprehensive assessment of György Kepes’s animated life, which introduces him not only as a shapeshifter of modernism but also as a polymath and visionary thinker whose legacy and faith in "optical democracy" grants him a pioneering role in the history of the Art and Technology Movement.


Best Feature Documentary Film (Main Category)


Directed by: Márton Orosz

A girl and her hands, while learning to play the piano, gradually lost the ability to “play”. Playing is no longer a game, she and hands seemed in dissonance with each other.


Best Animation (Main Category)


Directed by: Emi Yining Sun

In a story of survival and revenge, Parker, the new girl in town, unknowingly becomes the target of her charming but dangerous neighbor, James. Lured into his trap, she ends up locked in his dark basement, where he plans to make her his next horrifying artwork. As fear takes hold, Parker's determination grows; she must outsmart James and turn her nightmare into a chance for revenge, leading to a thrilling confrontation that will keep audiences on the edge of their seats.


Best Short Screenplay (Main Category)
Best Screenwriter Debut (Additional Category)


Written by: Hannah Avery Cronk

Frank, a man trapped in a dead-end job, sees his life crumble after being fired. In a society that demands constant success, Frank is sent to a desocialization center, a program where individuals, under the guise of reintegrating into the workforce, undergo a process of learning designed to strip them of their individuality and reshape them to fit the system’s needs.
At the center, Frank is subjected to an initially pedagogical process, where he learns to disconnect from his emotions and his sense of identity to conform to societal demands. What starts as a mental and psychological training soon becomes a biological transformation. As the sessions progress, his body begins to mirror a regression to a more instinctive state, a change that goes beyond the mind and takes root in his physical self. Frank transitions from a man controlled by the culture of productivity to a being driven by animal instincts.
This more primal, animalistic behavior is not an anomaly, but rather a logical and natural response to the exhaustion caused by a system that has pushed him to the brink. Frank’s transformation is not merely a metaphor for his collapse; it’s a return to his most basic essence, an inevitable reaction to the inhuman pressure of an economic system that leaves no room for failure.
"Failures" explores how, in the face of the capitalist system’s overwhelming demand for success and productivity, the individual ultimately becomes self-destructive, leading to a regression to instinctive behaviors where culture and reason are replaced by animalistic impulses. Through this evolution, the story suggests that when individuals are forced to align with a system that strips them of their humanity, the only natural escape is a reversion to their primal nature.


Best Short Screenplay (Main Category)


Written by: Cesar Sanchis Romero

Opening line to novel: "Seemed harmless at first for Momma to keep Bunk's amputated leg in the freezer."
Who’s There? is an absurd comedy about a family with a lion’s share of peculiarities. Momma, Sister, Ivylee and Bunk live on a chicken farm in the rural south. Each day the women have a memorial service for Bunk’s severed leg, which they otherwise keep in the freezer. Bunk lost his leg ten years earlier when he went berserk and started wringing the necks of all their chickens. Momma fired a warning shot but closed her eyes when the gun went off and accidentally blew Bunk’s leg off. Bunk became so peculiar that he was banished from the house and lives outside as the family pet, “Precious.” Each day the women wait—Momma waits for Bunk to return or for God to fetch her home; Ivylee waits for her imaginary lover, Mr. Robinson; Sister waits for relief from the drudgery of running the farm and maintaining the family.
Momma manages life through make-believe and is always looking for signs. Although they are all around her, she cannot see them. There are several knocks at the door, but Momma cannot answer. A rock with a note appears on the front porch, and each of the women thinks the message is meant for her. When Meter Reader knocks, Momma thinks he is Christ come to carry her home. When Bunk knocks, he must first enter as Mr. Robinson. Later, when he knocks on Momma’s bedroom door, he enters as himself. Bunk explains that while there is always a knock at the door, each person must open that door for himself.
Bunk convinces Momma to bury the leg, and during their most bizarre service, Meter Reader returns to marry Ivylee, and they bury his “bag of wife” in the coffin along side Bunk’s leg. In their most bizarre yet somehow sweet service, each person comes out of the darkness of their individual life to the light of a new one. Momma learns that “who” she has been waiting for these many years has been there all along if she could have only opened the door. At story’s end, as all carry the coffin to its final resting place, they sing “In the Garden,” and as the lights fade to dark; the only remaining light is from the single candle on the credenza where the coffin once sat.
Who’s There could probably best be described as an absurd cross between Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace and Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, but with a southern flavor.


Best Original Screenplay (Main Category)


Written by: Sandra Cropsey

In a nondescript near future, a grief stricken, neophyte print journalist embarks on a journey of self-discovery while working on a story about a new psychedelic drug.


Best Original Screenplay (Main Category)
Best Unproduced Screenplay (Main Category)


Written by: Adam Goudchaux

A couple, Mason and Avery, reunites after a 6-month break to see if they can salvage their relationship through a secluded, private weekend in the forest. Their plans hit an obstacle when they arrive to find their StayBNB hosts, an older couple named Joseph and Tara, are there when they aren’t supposed to be. This is only the first of many odd occurrences that test the strained couple’s growth and trust in each other, ultimately leading to their hosts’ disturbing truth.


Best Unproduced Screenplay (Main Category)


Written by: Alex Havens

A political debate, broadcast live on a 24-hour news channel. As the speakers are arguing about social issues, water invades the set and floods the whole room. Nobody seems to notice ...


Best Micro-Short Film (Main Category)


Directed by: David Tessier

Bad judgment leads to the suicide of a high school student, and the case is covered up by power, leading to another chain of cases that exposes the secret hands behind one corruption case after another. For the sake of his children he chose to fill the void of the law with revenge in his own way.


Best Director (Main Category)
Best Actress (Main Category)


Directed by: Liang Ba

An android looking for the code for love meets a hunter sent to kill her. Together they search for answers, fall in love and uncover a mystery that changes everything. An indie romantic sci-fi fantasy.
Bladerunner meets Alice is Wonderland through the eyes of Mullholland Drive with the romance of Chungking Express.


Best Actress (Main Category)


Directed by: Jack Davies

In 2026, fugitive journalist Emilio Borges tells the story of Cometa 1600, a group of scientists dedicated to studying the consequences of environmental degradation on our mental health and who were forcibly disappeared due to their environmental activism. Through a device called the Kaleidoscopic Camera, they discovered that human dreams depend on Monarch butterfly migrations, which are threatened by ecological damage. These scientists have solutions and Emilio is the only one who can share them.


Best ECO Film (Additional Category)
Best Director Debut (Additional Category)


Directed by: Alejandra Díaz Olvera

Jade, a reserved young woman, embarks on a hiking trip with her boyfriend John and their friends, Lewis and Kirsten, to a remote hilltop campsite. During their ascent, Jade is the first to notice a haunting presence — a mysterious entity cloaked in a yellow raincoat, its face a void of impenetrable darkness. Her sense of unease is dismissed by her companions, who see her as timid and fragile compared to the rest of the group.
After a seemingly uneventful night, Jade awakens to find her friends have vanished, leaving her alone in the wilderness. Trapped and disoriented, she begins to experience nightmarish visions and eerie illusions conjured by the sinister entity, preventing her from escaping. Unbeknownst to her, John and Kirsten are also lost in the forest, inexplicably unable to leave, as if an unseen force holds them captive.
As Jade navigates her terror, she is forced to confront her inner fears and unravel the mystery behind the entity's power. In a final confrontation, Jade discovers the entity's weakness and uses her newfound strength to shatter the enchantment, freeing herself, and her friends from the entity's dark grip and returning them to reality.


Best Student Film (Additional Category)


Directed by: Adrian Tsang

Five-year-old Ed discovers a love for scary movies, but this causes a terrible nightmare.


Best Screenwriter Debut (Additional Category)


Directed by: Adrian Tsang

As night falls, Alice and Clément run breathlessly. In the heart of an oppressive nature, something mysterious is stalking them. They have only two certainties: what is pursuing them is aggressive, and it sees in the dark...
Alors que la nuit tombe, Alice et Clément courent à en perdre haleine.
Au coeur d’une nature oppressante quelque chose de mystérieux les traque. Ils n’ont que deux certitudes.
Ce qui les poursuit est agressif, et il voit dans le noir….


Best Horror (Additional Category)


Directed by: Jérémy Barlozzo

It's a dark comedy about the fight against the inner child. This film combines mysticism, allegory and horror elements.
They look like a harmonious couple. But for the common good, his wife needs to grow up. What if we start a battle with the inner child? Who will win?
What is the Movie about:
The solid Husband urges his charming Wife to destroy her inner child. It must be made for the common good. It's time to take life seriously and stop getting caught up in some frivolous nonsense. And so they dared to confront this mythical entity. But for some reason, the spirited girl keeps coming back to life again and again.


Best Dark Comedy (Additional Category)
Best Director Debut (Additional Category)
Best Young Actress (Additional Category)


Directed by: Olga Kostyanova

The Death of Toby, it is a suspenseful narrative VR project. In this narrative, the unusual priest at the graveyard reveals to the experiencer that Mr. Toby's death was unnatural, with the murderer present at the funeral. Suspects include an anonymous figure, a security guard, a vendor, an architect, and a bodybuilder. However, during interrogation, they deny involvement. Investigation reveals each suspect's role: the anonymous figure represents oceanic waste, the security guard symbolizes the depleted ozone layer, the vendor sells toxic food, the architect's design is flawed, and the bodybuilder encourages suicide. The experiencer discovers the priest is the true culprit, Toby himself, a suicidal penguin. Toby's revelations unveil the suspects' true identities: oceanic waste, environmental depletion, poisoned food, fractured ice, and exploited marine life. Human waste in Antarctica harms penguins, while an imprisoned orca kills its caretaker. The experiencer realizes the prison is a metaphor for their own captivity.
In the VR narrative, the priest character's pre-revelation subtleties, such as his position and dialogue, ingeniously mislead players, setting a foundation for his eventual unmasking as Toby, the penguin. This misdirection is echoed in the graveyard scene, where the priest insinuates the murderer's presence but doesn't specify their inclusion among the five suspects. This narrative technique effectively rationalises the ending: Toby's self-inflicted death and the revelation that human actions, symbolized by marine pollution caused by the participants, catalyzed the events.


Best 360º (Additional Category)


Directed by: Xiaoyan Dong

Lyrics focus on a child's misfortune of being raised in a country that only knows war.


Best Music Video (Additional Category)


Directed by: Alex Visani

It happened in 1979 at the end of the Soviet past of one of the industrial towns. Galina, a woman who is rapidly losing her youth, fell in love with the police chief - she can no longer live in secret. She is very ashamed in front of her husband. She is haunted by the suspicions of her husband and those around her. One evening she can't stand it and decides to kill her husband. Her lover helps to hide the crime. Meanwhile, karma does not wait for justice and decides to punish her lover by taking his wife's life. Karma is satisfied and disappears, taking away Galina's mind. Our heroine, crushed by terrible events, is looking for a way out on the railway tracks.


Best Sport Film (Additional Category)


Directed by: Maks Stupak

We're all main characters in a movie of extras


Best No-Dialogue Film (Additional Category)
Best Original Soundtrack (Additional Category)


Directed by: Lorenzo Catapano

"Veiled Sins" exposes the modern Catholic Church's hypocritical nature of centuries-long sexual abuse and cover-ups. All told through the lens of a feline diocese led by a dog Bishop.


Best AI Film (Additional Category)


Directed by: James Jones

A short AI film exploring morals in medieval Japan. During that time, samurai practiced a custom known as "tsujigiri" (辻斬り). This film is a brief sketch of how such an event might have unfolded.


Best AI Film (Additional Category)
Best Poster (Additional Category)


Directed by: Pavlo Karusenko

Eva lives in a shared house. Her partner, Mateo, visits her regularly. When there is a free room, Eva calls her friend from school, María.
Eva's parents visit her often, giving their opinion on the state of the apartment and its inhabitants.
Mateo is attracted to María and suggests to Eva that they have a threesome.
Thus, Eva, Mateo and María on one side, Eva and her parents on the other, and the couple who lives in the other room and has a baby, form three unstable trios.


Best Web-Series (Additional Category)


Directed by: Antonio Orbe