DATING AUDREY is the story of Pete Trumbull, a nostalgic young man who spends too much time wallowing in self-pity and living in the past. After a night of bingeing his late mother's Audrey Hepburn films, Pete wakes up to find Audrey there with him, attempting to help him move forward. The lesson Pete learns from their time together is that yearning for the past only delays one's future.


Best Short Film (Main Category)
Best Director (Main Category)
Best Actor (Main Category)
Best Actress (Main Category)
Best Cinematography (Main Category)


Directed by: Dan Hertzog

Pizza call center worker Claire knows that something is terribly wrong when her long time customer James struggles with his usual order.


Best Short Film (Main Category)


Directed by: Tom McIntire

Diana Sato (41 years old), a woman from Hong Kong, lives in Tokyo, Japan with her two elementary school-age sons and Eiji (8 years old). Diana starts her own Chinese conversation class as a side job to save for her son's future.
Taku Nagayasu (35 years old) joins Diana's Chinese conversation class due to her random chance. Nagayasu was a 35-year-old part-time worker who lived with vague anxiety about his life.
Through his Chinese conversation class, Nagayasu gradually began to look beyond Japan to the world. At the same time, a major event that shook the world was taking place in Hong Kong...


Best Feature Film (Main Category)
Best Independent Film (Additional Category)


Directed by: Naoki Fujimoto

A former underground techno dj working at a big famous law firm spirals down to dark sides of society where the war already started and finds himself in moral grayareas. With one eye on the past and one eye on the future he stirs among the ashes of the real underground.


Best Experimental Film (Main Category)


Directed by: Gideon Homes

The stories of non-meeting. Two people trapped in a triangle of emptiness, fear and loneliness. Dance video as a story of life, as an object. Performers in a dialog with space, sound, light and paper.
Both the dance video and the video installation …Or to Be evolves, shapes and naturally transforms one of the main topics of the piece – space in a dialog with characters, light and sound which are understood as an equal partner in creation. Thanks to that finds a spectator himself in an unusual and unexpected spatial contexts and perceptions.
The original duet is the result of two “solos” of the dance piece involving another area of the dance video as an object.
Presents two people trapped in a triangle of emptiness, fear and loneliness. Two characters transformed as the natural culmination of the original piece into a triangle of space-sound-lights. A caricature of near misses, it is an urgent commentary on our inability to abandon routine stereotypes, relax into hysteria and get at least a little bit closer to one another.
Two characters, each unaware of the other, are connected only by the spectator who sees them together. The audience witnesses this non-meeting, imagining what would transpire if the characters caught sight of one another. The production offers an original take on the oppressive emptiness of the present, experienced against a backdrop of ceaseless communication and the endless accumulation of experiences.
The installation consists of two separate videos which are being simultaneously projected either opposite or next to each other. A spectator experiences two separate stories of non-meeting in one space/room.


Best Experimental Film (Main Category)


Directed by: Stéphanie N´Duhirahe

"A woman copes with grief after her husband's sudden death, finding strength and purpose in rebuilding her life."


Best Short Documentary Film (Main Category)


Directed by: Scott Thurman

As Alina transforms into Legerin, her story mirrors the broader Women Life Freedom movement. Beginning in Cuba, her engagements in Mexico, exploration in Syria, and journey through Europe converge in a shared struggle for women's rights worldwide.
As Alina undergoes a transformative metamorphosis into Legerin, her personal evolution mirrors the broader transformation within the Women Life Freedom movement. Commencing in Cuba, her engagements with the Zapatistas in Mexico, her journey through Europe and exploration of the Kurdish cause in Syria symbolize a convergence of struggles. These experiences forge vital connections between seemingly distant realities, significantly contributing to the overarching fight for women's rights globally.
Through the lens of Alina's journey, "Legerin: In Search of Alina" provides a compelling insight into why women around the world draw inspiration from the Women Life Freedom movement. The film captures not only Alina's unique and transformative experiences but also sheds light on the broader message of women's agency, resilience, and the pursuit of a life free from oppressive structures.
In essence, "Legerin: In Search of Alina" emerges as a narrative thread intricately woven into the fabric of the Women Life Freedom movement—a powerful testament to the influential role of individual stories in shaping the collective struggle for equality, autonomy, and the universal right to lead a life of freedom.


Best Feature Documentary Film (Main Category)


Directed by: Maria Laura Vasquez

The year is 2099. When a moonquake reveals an unnatural rock formation, the protagonist gradually learns about the principles of rock formation and the true nature of the universe.


Best Animation (Main Category)


Directed by: Zihan GAO

"Chain," directed by Ling Han, is a 3D animated short film featuring charming characters and a sophisticated environment. It uniquely tells the story of the mantis catching the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind.
"Chain" is visually stunning and emotionally rich, expressing nature's survival instincts and prompting viewers to ponder life's deeper questions. We sincerely recommend this film to fans of animation and proverbs.


Best Animation (Main Category)
Best Sound Design (Additional Category)
Best Producer (Additional Category)


Directed by: LING HAN

A new mother tries to rest after a nasty fall, but is unsettled when her baby son seems to advance impossibly fast while in her husband's care.


Best Short Screenplay (Main Category)


Written by: Tommy Britt

****Based on a true story.
Sandra leaves her sales job for Hollywood with 2 secrets: her desire to perform and her mental illness. Although twice her health sends her packing from L.A.'s world of acting schools, stunt work and romance she's determined to succeed the third time. Shortly after her arrival her mind clicks into a manic state. Within twenty-four hours she finds herself in the worst hell imaginable: detained and manic in a system that refuses to follow protocol. It follows her struggles with mental illness, romance and her rise from L.A. County Jail to #1 in Sales.


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


Written by: Sandra LeeAnne Boszko

During the grandmother's wake, a daughter confronts her father to discover the secret he wanted to hide when he abandoned her years before.


Best Screenwriter Debut (Additional Category)


Written by: Michael Agazzi

Vincent Hill is a psychopathic writer who writes his own books because of his victims. When someone is no longer interesting enough for him, he decides to kill them.


Best Director (Main Category)
Best Original Screenplay (Main Category)
Best Mobile Film (Additional Category)
Best Student Film (Additional Category)
Best Producer (Additional Category)


Directed by: Ciubotariu Rozalia Irina

A violent incident uproots queer Russell's turbulent young East Coast life and lands him in Seattle in the care of his grandmother, Ida.


Best Unproduced Screenplay (Main Category)


Written by: Tom McIntire

Mother and daughter live in a seemingly happy world. Every weekend they take the train to their grandmother's.This ritual has been repeated for many years. It is part of their lives. While waiting for the train and traveling, hidden emotions and desires are revealed.


Best Micro-Short Film (Main Category)


Directed by: Grażyna Maria Gudejko

A woman in a new home must protect her family while contending with the unexpected inhabitants of her house.


Best Director (Main Category)
Best Producer (Additional Category)
Best Poster (Additional Category)


Directed by: William R.A. Rush

When Simon knocks on a couples door, he brings news that will turn their world upside down.


Best Actor (Main Category) - Sam Garioch
Best Drama (Additional Category)


Directed by: Ed Willey

A man suffers from schizophrenia and imagines a group of friends with whom he spends time in his house. The doctor prescribed a medication that he does not take. Because of this, he reacts and has hallucinations. He sees people who don't exist and carries on having conversations by himself.


Best Actor (Main Category)
Best Thriller (Additional Category)
Best Trailer (Additional Category)


Directed by: Ciubotariu Rozalia Irina

Temporarily living at her friend's house, Sofia is stalked by a supernatural being who seeks to impose his authority.


Best Actress (Main Category) - Abril Capitani
Best Director Debut (Additional Category)
Best Horror (Additional Category)


Directed by: Franco Nicolás Maldonado

David Michaels, a troubled New York poet (Damian Chapa) finds inspiration and heartbreak in the enigmatic, institutionalized Poet Regina Romanescu (Olga Kent)
As their bond deepens, David must confront the darkness of Regina's past and oppressive forces that seem to keep them apart.
Will their light shine bright enough to overcome the shadows or will it become a tragic victim of it's own beauty set against the timeless backdrop of Paris.


Best Original Screenplay (Main Category)
Best Actress (Main Category)
Best Drama (Additional Category)


Directed by: Damian Chapa

When bespoke becomes a label for optimized service, the human race is no longer content with customizing things; it begins to customize humans. One by one, the perfect service, the perfect children, the intricate global fertility chains, and the women therein fade out from the documentary footage, while director Jingjing steps into the spotlight from behind the camera. She becomes a Thai surrogate in captivity, but also a surrogacy agent who achieved upward social mobility; she turns into a selfless and hypocritical American surrogate mother – a product of technology born through surrogacy herself; she even tries to play an elite black lesbian at the very top of the feminist chain of contempt, only to collapse in on herself.


Best Director Of Photography (Main Category)
Best Actress (Main Category)
Best Producer (Additional Category)
Best Poster (Additional Category)


Directed by: Jingjing Chen

A movie musical, based on Mary Shelley's novel, about the human need for love and companionship.
Having lost his mother at a young age, Victor Frankenstein seeks to end human mortality and arrogantly enters territory beyond his control. While he enjoys unconditional love from Elizabeth, he grants none to his creation.


Best Original Score (Main Category)


Directed by: Joe LoBianco

Ancient Lands & Lives- Above The Grand Canyon Rims is a high impact and fast-paced short Docu-music video that embraces Arizona’s Grand Canyon wildlife experience through versatile animal habitats and its resilient pinyon-juniper evergreen trees on the Canyon's Rims. Its vast colorful canyon rock formations reveal layers in geological time, dramatic thunderstorms with rising cloud formations, dark night skies (Milky Way Galaxy visible) and sacred tribal lands.


Best Editing (Main Category)
Best Composer (Additional Category)


Directed by: Carol J. Amore

When memories overwhelm her, Leila, aged 19, experiences a sensation akin to being submerged. She is battling dissociative episodes, where her anxieties, remorse, and delusions become entangled. Despite her ability to endure, the burden of her past experiences remains inescapable. Like water clinging to her upon reaching the shore, the residue of her memories persists.


Best Student Film (Main Category)


Directed by: Jinyang Li

A young man, tormented by inner demons and anguish, seeks solace in nature. One day, when he discovers a hidden gift beneath a tree, his entire existence undergoes a profound transformation.


Best Student Film (Additional Category)
Best Young Actor (Additional Category) - Anton Forsdik


Directed by: Julius Wadman

When a small town is ambushed by an unwelcome reptile, people start to question whether or not it can actually be killed.


Best Young Director (Additional Category)


Directed by: Zander Rice

After accidently killing her husband, Nivea turns to her friends, Swahlli, Iesha and Asia, their therapist to help cover her crime.


Best Television Script (Additional Category)
Best Screenwriter Debut (Additional Category)


Written by: Holly Sawyer

“Imbroglio” is set in a timeless and imaginary Italian world and is a loving nod to the arch Hollywood and European film noirs of the forties and fifties.
Giorgio Gambetti is a Tax Inspector for the ‘Giustizia Tributaria’, whose profession of expiring frauds parallels a personal quest.. to hunt down the young libertine who has corrupted his wife, Maria.
Giorgio’s private search takes him to the underbelly of a city that knows his name only too well. His pride crushed (by having to confess his wife’s infidelity during his investigation), Giorgio concludes that there is no civil way out of his suffocating predicament – his “imbroglio”. So when he finally procures to confront the young love rival in a downtown café, he finds that there is no recourse but to take a life.


Best Scenography (Additional Category)


Directed by: Ian Sciacaluga

A man lives with a clone - a female version of him. The things get complicated when he discovers that the clone actually claims that the man is in fact the one cloned by her.


Best Drama (Additional Category)
Best Black & White Film (Additional Category)


Directed by: Franciszek Przanowski

In the futuristic world of highly advanced technology, human beings are transformed into mechanical lifeforms. A deadly electronic virus suddenly breaks out and the entire mechanical civilisation is on the verge of destruction.


Best Sci-Fi (Additional Category)


Directed by: Yufeng WANG

The village dignitaries go hunting with the new farm manager… What could go wrong?


Best Dark Comedy (Additional Category)
Best Actor (Main Category) - Ferenc Köles
Best Director Of Photography (Main Category)
Best Student Film (Additional Category)


Directed by: Karácsony Péter

This documentary film expresses the will and commitment to sharing, through the story of emotions and experience, the context of the socio-cultural event 'Queen: "Check the King"', and with it re-present the testimonies of the victims of gender violence and feminicide.
Especially that of Stefania, who asked that her experience be of help to other women who experience or have experienced similar domestic violence.
It is the desire to put one's suffering at the service of others: a way to overcome it and prevent other people from experiencing similar pain.
The event we are describing, developed with the theatrical communication formula (let's not just call it a theatrical show), took place in Palermo on 27 May 2023 by the associations Vita Onlus of Milan and MarcoSacchi of Palermo, with the collaboration of Ennio Giganti, for the organization and planning part; Sergio Vespertino for the theater planning and direction and with the personal contribution of Dacia Maraini.
This film supports the commitment of all those who actively work against gender violence, with the aim of spreading the cultural, cognitive aspects and awareness of what still happens around us, so that everyone is no longer an extra in life of others, but can become a protagonist and actor by giving a concrete hand in helping victims of gender violence and helping to stop this social plague.
All this is presented with the concreteness of life, without pretending not to know or see. To address the issue responsibly, it is necessary to assume one's share of objective responsibility, because everyone is still part of the Educating Community, which has the task of preventing, combating and reporting, without silence, shame or fear.
With the courage to do and testify; with strength to ask for help and help; with the commitment to promote a healthy sentimental and civil education, today we take the step, without shame, to report and ask for help.
Let's keep alive the desire and hope that all this can soon end.


Best Educational Film (Additional Category)
Best Inspirational Film (Additional Category)


Directed by: Luca De Giorgi, Sergio Vespertino

A hot air balloon in the shape of a hippo, and an opera singer, cross paths in the Arctic.


Best ECO Film (Additional Category)


Directed by: Nicholas Snyder

"Heroin Hypocrite" is a high-energy, punk song written by Amy Swallow. The song explores themes of identity, the importance of authenticity and self-deception through satire and vintage imagery. The lyrics depict a narrative where someone presents a facade, projecting a “rockstar” image of rebellion while concealing their own vulnerability and inner turmoil. This video utilizes dolls, toys and eccentric costumes to not only call-out the romanization of drug use, but also to call back the importance of staying true to your child self.


Best Music Video (Additional Category)


Directed by: Marz Gebhardt

The official music video for Scarlett Seraphim’s debut song Nail Me Down is a hallucinatory and psychedelic game of cat and mouse, skewing lines between the hunter and the hunted. After fleeing into the shadows of the woods to escape violent ends, a woman awakens to the dark and supernatural forces of the night. Traversing between reality and dream, damsel and villain, maiden and demon, Nail Me Down explores the divisions between the divine feminine and sacred feminine rage.


Best Director (Main Category)
Best Music Video (Additional Category)


Directed by: Scarlett Amaris

Each person expresses their perspective on clothes and the episodes related to the clothes through movement. Find your true self, get out of the frame, and add more colors.


Best Dance Video (Additional Category)


Directed by: YESEUL CHOI

Award-winning photographer and author Sonia Marin has been capturing the cherished memories and life of her grandmother and mother over the past twenty years. This is a lifelong journey into retracing the steps that the women in Marin’s life have taken as they ventured from Italy to the United Kingdom and back. The photography book Twenty Weights, Please represents the pinnacle of this journey, along with an intimate short film written by Sonia Marin and shot by Vittoria Elena Simone, My Mum Used to Call Me Sister. Every aspect of this project has been lovingly nurtured and presented, allowing us to delve into the intricate narratives that transport us back to the vibrant 1950s through the director’s lens.
“My mum used to call me sister was born from my overpowering need to imagine and to tell: I remember at her place, between a cigarette and a cup of tea, how her tales from that past captured my imagination, I was fascinated and I really felt as if I had been there myself in those streets, in that factory and, under that damp sky... I could almost smell the air.
I interviewed my mother and I wanted her to remember as many details as possible, and her words took shape in precise and recurring images, simple moments of everyday life that returned like unexpected gifts, giving her a comforting smile. It is that sense of belonging that I wanted to resurface, a link with that precise moment, a homage to a past that reshapes and returns as a moment to contemplate.
As I showed my mom the project, I think she was moved. She paused for a moment; it certainly didn't close the wounds, but it brought peace. Yet, the feeling of what could have been still lingers. This weighty inheritance passed down from my grandmother to my mother and now to me, serving as a reminder of missed opportunities and of the persistent longing to do something meaningful in life.
Even before working on this short film, the text included in the photography book related to this project speaks of a shirt that breathes when the wind occasionally touches it. And I realize that these images, notes, and reflections always return to my photography unconsciously. All narration lies in this - the presence and absence. The house may appear empty, yet there's intangible energy persisting. It's like a room filled with memories, a box within a box, each layer holding its own significance”


Best No-Budget Film (Additional Category)


Directed by: Sonia Marin

A gripping short story, 'Ghattam,' revolves around a mysterious watch that entangles its wearer in a perplexing loop of events."


Best Thriller (Additional Category)


Directed by: Vidhun V Nair