Winter 2025 Award Winners

Jury Award (program LAPSE UNKNOWN)

LANGUAGE : Greek
COUNTRY :  Greece
YEAR : 2025
DURATION : 16m
DIRECTOR, WRITER, DOP : Eleni Tsekeri
PRODUCER : Phaedra Vokali
VOICE OVER : Iro Mpezou
APPEARING : Thodoris Markouizos
MUSIC : Tsolimon (Nikos Tsolis)
EDITING : Katerina Zagka, Eleni Tsekeri
TITLE DESIGN : Korina Gallika 

MUSICAL EXCERPTS :
"TOKALO" - TSOLIMON (INNER EAR 2025)
"PATO" -  TSOLIMON (INNER EAR 2025)
"ΚΥΨΕΛΗ" - TSOLIMON
"ANTWSHIP" - TSOLIMON
SUBTITLES : Dafni Kioussi

CONTACTS / LINKS :  @lne.tsekeraout

Going off to an inner quest to Tinos island in the Cyclades, the filmmaker attempts to define herself and her position in the world. She keeps shifting between two gardens  and two father figures, while trying to deal with a personal loss, the defeat of a social movement and a cinematic failure. What remains reads like a letter to the ever missing father.

Bio : Born in Athens in 1993, Eleni Tsekeri is a graduate of the Department of History and Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (2021). In 2023, she completed her Master's degree in "Cultural Heritage and Documentary Film Production" at the University of the Aegean.

Since 2015, Eleni Tsekeri has been professionally involved in the film industry, working as a Casting Extras Coordinator and Assistant Director, contributing to numerous film productions with a strong focus on coordination and creative collaboration.

Audience Award (program LAPSE UNKNOWN)

LANGUAGE : English
COUNTRY : USA
YEAR : 2025
DURATION : 7m
DIRECTORS : Evan Bode, Marvin Wade
WRITER, NARRATOR : Marvin Wade
ANIMATOR : Evan Bode

CONTACTS / LINKS : https://www.evanbode.net/about   Project Mend     Re/Creation    @mend_syracuse   @evanbode

Accompanied by animation, writer and activist Marvin Wade speaks personally about his 25 years of incarceration—and the positive transformation he achieved in spite of, not because of, the inhumane prison system around him.

Director statement : Evan Bode: “As I worked on this film—which was developed in conversation with Marvin Wade—my time-consuming, time-based art practice of animation allowed a perfect space to reflect on Wade's writing about time and how we use it. I animated slowly, thinking about change while creating images that change, using a mix of materials including watercolors, acrylics, charcoal, markers, pens, colored pencils, and oil pastels. I see my visual interpretation as serving a supporting role, designed to harmonize with Marvin's primary text and lived experience, which is at the film’s center. I believe Marvin offers a moving affirmation of the human capacity for positive transformation, as well as a powerful critique of a dehumanizing prison system that works to prevent growth and healing, rather than foster it.  

This film was commissioned by Project Mend as the first in a planned series of artist/author collaborations, adapting the published work of prison-impacted authors for an audiovisual medium to add a new expressive dimension and introduce their stories to a wider audience. It contains only excerpts of Marvin's full essay "Time and Prison: Are They Mutually Exclusive?" which was published in Volume 3 of Mend in 2025 and is available to read online in its entirety.”

Bios : 

Evan Bode is an award-winning experimental animator, independent filmmaker, mixed media artist, composer, editor, and arts educator. Evan's short films, which break binaries through a stylistic mix of live-action and animation, have been celebrated at major film festivals across the United States and around the world. 

Marvin Wade is a Spiritual Activist and family man, born in 1970 and raised in Brooklyn, NY. While incarcerated for 25 years, Marvin wrote multiple books worth of stories, novels, and personal essays on every bit of paper he could find, combining his gift as a storyteller with the art of writing. A celebrated writer and speaker, Marvin has read his work at spaces such as the Malin Gallery, Princeton University, The Everson Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art. You can read his writings in publications such as Mend, Voices of Fortune, and recreationwriters. 

Additional acknowledgements

This film was produced in partnership with Project Mend, with special thanks to Patrick Berry and the editors of Mend. 

Project Mend is a multimodal, grassroots-level, open-access national archive centered on the creative work of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals and their communities. The initiative explores how people learn to write themselves into new identities and new lives by centering their interests, stories, and histories. Mend emphasizes creative expression as healing, positioning storytelling as data and testimony—forms of knowledge often excluded from traditional academic and public archives.

Project Mend is made possible through collaboration with the Center for Community Alternatives and through an HNY Post-Incarceration Humanities Partnership, which is generously supported by the Mellon Foundation and the CNY Humanities Corridor. Additionally, the project has been supported at Syracuse University by the Engaged Humanities Network, the Humanities Center, the SOURCE, Syracuse University Libraries, and the Department of Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition.

Special Mention (program LAPSE UNKNOWN)

LANGUAGE : English
COUNTRY : USA
YEAR : 2025
DURATION : 11m
DIRECTOR, WRITER, PRODUCER : Sean Michael Blanchard
CO-PRODUCER : Tati Chavitage
ANIMATION, MUSIC, SOUND SCORE, VOICE : Sean Michael Blanchard
NIGHTMARE SEQUENCE ANIMATION : Natalie Peracchio
Tommy by Bijijoo used in short hallway sequence

CONTACTS / LINKS : seanmblanchard.com    @seabeazley 

Popper’s charisma is challenged as he wakes up to endure his first full day at a mental hospital. Apprehensive by nature, Popper looks for ways he can find absurdity in his interactions. After being awoken by nightmarish thoughts of lab rats being experimented on, Popper begins his day by first being faced with an apologetic therapist with a short list of generalized methods of treatment. Popper wakes up on the therapist’s couch after sleeping for the majority of their session. When awakened, he is hesitant to express his emotions, only to be plagued with a false sense of sympathy from the therapist, as well as a recommendation to “breathe”. Popper continues the day, participating in a chaotic group therapy session where he meets a grounded and knowledgeable patient named Scooter, and later deals with an intimidating and careless psychiatrist. Popper’s resilience is constantly tested throughout the day, and he is on the brink of losing motivation for recovery, although Scooter seems to be a guiding force with just enough wisdom for Popper to cling on to.

Director statement : Popper is a character I created by simply looking in the mirror. He holds all of my fundamental core values and views on life, and is a vessel for me to explore mundanity through a different lens.

This project's conception developed as a response to a very difficult period of time I had with my mental health. While attending Emerson College's MFA program in Film and Media Art, I began experiencing heightened anxiety that deterred me from making connections, and properly collaborating with others. Animation became a coping mechanism for me. It allowed me to work creatively in isolation, spending hundreds of hours drawing alone in my room. During this time I took part in a program at a mental hospital, which is the story that You're Watching Popper came to be.

During my time at the mental facility I kept a journal. This became a vital part of the writing process, as I was able to properly access the head space I was in during this time. I wanted the story to reflect myself, but also the community I was met with, for better or for worse. You're Watching Popper is a never ending story that I will work to tell more of. It exemplifies the struggles and hopelessness felt with mental disorders, the feelings of isolation and disappointment when being a patient, and the beauty and importance of community and human connection.

Bio : Sean Blanchard is a multimedia artist based in Boston, Massachusetts. He primarily works in the fields of comedic writing and animation, with past works in experimental analog film and sculpture installations. His work is an accumulation of the world through his lens and ownership, with his personality, internal thoughts, and physical expressions constantly being constructed in response to the media he engages with. Blanchard is a hoarder of all things he finds funny, unpredictable, and unique, and repurposes them into his work. As a self-described “collage artist”, Blanchard’s work, while often incorporating elements of visual collage, is always accumulated through a collage of thought. Finding elements from various storytelling techniques, he works to fight notions of genre-based thinking and create stories that feel polished, while containing the mundanity, humor, tragedy, and despair that reality often holds. Blanchard holds a B.A. in both Communications and Film Media from the University of Rhode Island and an M.F.A. in Film and Media Arts from Emerson College.

Jury Award (program THE HEAD, AND EVERYTHING THAT GOES WITH IT)

LANGUAGE : Latin
COUNTRY : Switzerland
YEAR : 2025
DURATION : 03
DIRECTOR, WRITER, PRODUCER : Katia Sophia Ditzler

CONTACTS / LINKS : https://www.katiasophiaditzler.com/   @katia.sophia.ditzler   Katia Ditzler  (佳亮) 

I THINK ABOUT THE ROMAN EMPIRE EVERY DAY is a media-archeological poetry film that responds to the viral 2023 social media trend revealing an everyday male preoccupation with the Roman Empire. While the meme often circles around humorous gender norms, the work traces its deeper cultural currents: Rome as a mythic ideal in certain, often more conservative spaces, but also as an ongoing civilizational substrate shaping basically everything from law, architecture, social norms to collective imagination. 

Combining machinima, TikTok dance video performance, and TEMU readymades, the project juxtaposes playful digital reenactment with critical reflection. Using 3D scans of Roman artefacts, AI-generated sequences, and performative elements, it questions what it means to live in the successor states of empire, how historical power structures subtly endure, how an imagined Rome shaped virtually all of European geopolitics starting with Charlemagne, how imperialism and cultural narratives, ideals of civilization, and political visions still pivot around Rome. 

It examines how Rome’s legacy is continually rewritten - romanticized, weaponized, or deconstructed - depending on the ideological context: A layered reflection on continuity and control, on modernity and myth. After all, the filmmaker, too, thinks about the Roman Empire every day.

Director statement : I like to make art that is funny and ironic, and in the case of this film I also wanted to work with memes, popular culture and subconscious undercurrents.

Bio : Katia Sophia Ditzler, *1992, is a transdisciplinary media artist, writer, and filmmaker whose work fuses experimental cinema, poetic text, immersive media, soundscapes, performance, and philosophical inquiry. With formal training in creative writing, transmedia arts, cultural anthropology, and philosophy from various institutions in Leipzig, Berlin, Moscow, Kyiv, Yogyakarta, Melbourne, and Zurich, she constructs complex symbolic systems that explore political myth, propaganda, memory, and power. Her texts. films, installations, and hybrid works have been presented internationally at festivals and exhibitions across Europe, Asia, the Americas, and Australia. She is based in Berlin, Zurich, and Bochum. She also hitchhiked from Germany to Singapore when she was 19/20. 

Audience Award (program THE HEAD, AND EVERYTHING THAT GOES WITH IT)

LANGUAGE : English, Italian, Spanish
COUNTRY :  Italy
YEAR : 2025
DURATION : 5m
DIRECTORS, WRITERS, PRODUCERS : Mattia Piccioli, Michele Marchini
CAST : Michele Marchini
DOP : Andrea Vatteroni, Melania Filidei
SOUND DESIGN : Davide Farris

CONTACTS / LINKS : PRESS KIT   @mattia_piccioli/ 

Shake Before Use is a short film that transcends traditional narratives while exploring the contrast and interaction between humanity and the world of communication. We explored the archaeology of communication tools used by humans until recently, now obsolete due to technological advancement. The objects we see have lost their original function and become seemingly useless remnants of a very recent past. Apparently useless, they are used as linguistic material, rediscovering a signaling function and beginning to communicate again. There is no nostalgic intent in this action; it is simply an investigation of what once seemed indispensable and then appears superfluous.

Director statement : Agitare Prima Dell'uso / Shake Before Use was born from our curiosity about everyday objects and signs that, with technological progress, have lost their original function. We are interested in how these communication tools, seemingly obsolete, can still “speak” through new uses, becoming linguistic and symbolic material. The film has no nostalgic intent; rather, it aims to probe the boundary between what we consider indispensable and what, within a few years, becomes superfluous. The choice of visual and sound language reflects this tension between past and present: images and sounds combine to create a sensory experience that goes beyond linear narrative, inviting the viewer to engage with the rhythm and substance of now-inactive media. Every object, every detail, is a small signal that testifies to the recent history of human communication, and their creative use allows us to reintroduce them into a contemporary context. Our work is rooted in an independent and experimental approach, between social documentary, narrative short film, and video art. With Shake Before Use, we aim to stimulate reflection on the relationship between technology, communication, and perception, without filters or sentimentality. It is a visual investigation of the present and the recent past, and of how humans interact with what they create, transform, and abandon. In this sense, the film becomes a sort of “archaeology of signs,” a poetic mapping of material memory and the remnants of our era.

Bios : Mattia Piccioli (born in Carrara, 1998) and Michele Marchini (born in Carrara, 1955) collaborate in cinema and video art, exploring independent and experimental narratives. Mattia, graduated in Cinema and Audiovisual at the Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara, creates documentaries, short films, and video art projects, including Io Immigrato, Lettera 32, and Agitare Prima dell’uso. Michele, director and writer, publisher of Senza Tribù, brings a narrative and reflective approach to his work, blending literature and moving images. Together, they investigate the relationship between people, territories, and communication, often giving voice to overlooked stories while experimenting with different visual and sound languages. Their cinema moves between social documentary, narrative short film, and video art, with constant attention to authenticity and formal experimentation.

Acknowledgements : Iva Kontic, our professor, for her support and valuable advice during the making of the film.

Inspirations : For this short film, we were inspired by A Voyage in Dwelling by Jesper Just and World of Glory by Roy Andersson, exploring video art and experimental cinema practices to investigate the archaeology of communication tools and visual and sound experimentation.

Jury Award (program ROUNDABOUT)

LANGUAGE : Korean
COUNTRY : South Korea
YEAR : 2024
DURATION : 41m
DIRECTOR / WRITER : Mingu Kang
CAST : Hosook Na, Junghoo Park, Sehyung Jung, Jiyun Lee, Youki, Heejun Lee, Deokhwan Kim
SPONSOR : Gangbuk Cultural Foundation (Produced with the support of the 2024 Gangbuk Cultural Foundation Local Arts Grant Program.)

CONTACTS, LINKS : @KMG   INTERVIEW | Mingu Kang Al-Tiba9

Seong-hyun, a teenage boy, sets out on a journey at the suggestion of his grandmother, Byung-hee, who insists on leaving without a destination. However, their plans are halted when the car breaks down. At that moment, the TV installed in the car starts airing a mysterious show titled Performance No. 19190301. As the performance begins, Seong-hyun and Byung-hee are transported back in time on a journey through the history of Korea.

Director Statement : The older and younger generations living in the same era experience the history of Korea through a peculiar performance. Witnessing historical moments and sometimes stepping directly into them, they come to feel the flow of history. Through Seong-hyun and Byung-hee's strange journey, the story delivers a message to those of us living today that history is not a series of disconnected events but a continuous stream, like water, and the future depends on our actions.

Bio : Kang Mingu is a Seoul-based filmmaker and media artist whose work drifts between film, performance, and the spectral edges of memory. Trained in visual aesthetics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, he approaches cinema as a site where personal histories, urban spaces, and the unseen layers of society converge. His feature Search Operation: The New Town Survivor (2021) received international acclaim, including the Feature Film Award at the Brno International Film Festival.

Kang’s films—Reset, Personality Counseling Center at 0 Avenue, and Performance No. 19190301—explore disappearance, trauma, and the fragile boundaries between reality and myth. His media art has been presented in solo and international exhibitions, and he was selected as a UNESCO City to City artist, expanding his practice to collaborative works in Europe.

Alongside filmmaking, Kang is the author of books on cinema, ghosts, and folklore, continuously weaving storytelling across disciplines and continents.

Additional credits

Audience Award (program ROUNDABOUT)

COUNTRY : Brazil
YEAR : 2024
DURATION : 08
DIRECTOR, WRITER, PRODUCER : Fabio Servullo
DOP, EDITING : Rodd Silva
CAST : Isabella Lulio

CONTACTS / LINKS : @memento_mori_curtametragem  

A woman in search of memory and identity dives into a surrealist journey where cinematic language itself is the vórtex of all reality.

Bio :  Fabio Servullo is a director and producer, graduated from the FAAP University Film School in São Paulo, Brazil.

He works in the independent film market as a music video director and art and effects director, with his main works being the feature films ‘Condado Macabro’ (Macabre County) - 2014 and ‘As Almas Que Dançam no Escuro’ (Souls That Dance in the Dark) - 2021.

The short film ‘Memento Mori’ 2024 is his first work in the role of both: director and producer.

Special Mention (program ROUNDABOUT)

LANGUAGE : Spanish
COUNTRY :  Spain
YEAR : 2025
DURATION : 20m
DIRECTOR, WRITER : Enrico Barbaro Jr.
PRODUCER : Gonzalo Carvajal
DISTRIBUTION : Films On the Road
CINEMATOGRAPHY : Enrico Barbaro Jr.
ART DIRECTION : Berta Bellido
SOUND : David G. Camacho
EDITING : Marcos By
MUSIC : Enrico Barbaro
COSTUMES : Lucía Ortega
CAST : Nicolás de Freitas, Paula Womez, Jorge Usón, Juan Codina, María José del Valle, Daniel Román, Daniel Ferrándiz, Magí Caldú, Carmen del Valle, Enrico Barbaro.

CONTACTS / LINKS :  https://filmsontheroad.com   @filmsontheroad   @enricobarbaro_jr

Alessandro, a young film director, will cross paths with Emma, a perfectionist theater actress. A myriad of extravagant characters will lead the protagonists to rethink their views on art, life, and love.

Bio : Enrico Barbaro Jr (Madrid, Spain, 2004) has recently completed his studies in cinematography at ECAM. He has worked on numerous short films and music videos as both director and DOP, with several of these projects being nominated at national and international festivals. He also combines cinema with theater, having performed at Teatro Matadero in the play "Los Nadadores Diurnos" (2023).

Jury Award (program WOUNDS BAREFOOT)

Due to distribution constraints, the film cannot be streamed at this time.

LANGUAGE : Arabic
COUNTRY :  Palestine
YEAR : 2024
DURATION : 8m
DIRECTORS : Hamdi Khalil Elhusseini, Samar Taher Lulu
EDITOR : Nour Taher Lulu
CAMERA MAN : Rashad Khalil Elhusseini

CONTACTS / LINKS : @hamdi_husseini

“Palestine Lentils" is a documentary film that tells the story of a Palestinian chef and his role in using his hobby as a shield against the famine caused by the war on Gaza, preserving the spirit of resilience and hope within his community.

Bios : Hamdi Elhusseini is a documentary filmmaker from Gaza with a strong background in capturing compelling humanitarian and social stories through film. A graduate of the Faculty of Science at Al-Azhar University – Gaza, Hamdi has dedicated his career to documenting the resilience of the Palestinian people amid war, occupation, and environmental challenges.

His acclaimed documentary "Jawaher" (co-directed with Samar Taher Lulu) won Best Documentary Film in the Women & Environment category at the ConnectHER Film Festival 2023, while his poetic film "Khalil Hanaa" (co-directed with Samar Taher Lulu) was named a finalist in the 2024–2025 ConnectHER "Stand Up Men" category, highlighting stories of male allies supporting women’s empowerment. In 2025, his  film عدس فلسطين (Adas Falasteen) / PALESTINE LENTILS  received several prestigious awards, including: Al Jazeera Documentary Award, The American University in Cairo Documentary Recognition, The "Lens on Palestine" Award.

Samar Taher Lulu is a passionate filmmaker from Gaza-Palestine, a multifaceted artist and storyteller. Her filmmaking journey began with her debut documentary, "Religious Tolerance," in 2019. Her latest two films, "Jawaher" and "Khalil Hanaa" (both co-directed with Hamdi Elhusseini)  which she directed, won two awards at the 2023 and 2025 ConnectHer Festival. Her mission is to bring the inspiring voices of the untold stories to the global stage through her documentaries.

Audience Award (program WOUNDS BAREFOOT)

LANGUAGE : Arabic, English, French
COUNTRY :  Palestine, Germany
YEAR : 2024
DURATION : 11m
DIRECTOR : Nour
MUSIC : Henno el 3arayes (traditional folklore song), Trio Joubran's The Trees We Wear, Fairuz's Sanarjiou ARCHIVES : personal family archives, Project 48 - Nakba: Erasing a people, Looted and Hidden by Rona Sela

CONTACTS / LINKS :  @nourjeehan_    feed.your.eyez

This film is an experimental documentary project that seeks to recount the multifaceted stories of the Nakba through the lens of a family. By weaving personal narratives with historical events, it attempts to reflect the broader, collective trauma experienced by Palestinians and also draws an important parallel to the "second" (if it ever really stopped since 1948...) Nakba happening to the people of Gaza as we speak. The film also delves into the layers of intergenerational trauma and the legacy passed down to children of exile or those exiled themselves.

Through this, the project explores profound questions: How do members of the Palestinian diaspora navigate their identity while living away from home? How do they reconnect with their cultural roots? These themes are examined implicitly throughout the film, using evocative elements like food, music, and archival material. Interwoven with these are the intimate interviews I conducted with some family members, adding depth to the narrative and offering a reflection on memory, displacement, and resistance.

Director statement : An important note about the end of my short film, the numbers of Palestinians martyrs in Gaza since October 7th is not accurate anymore and has more than doubled since I made the film. I haven't had access yet to a software to edit this again, but I would like to point it out because I find it crucial to know the situation has gotten worse than how it already was when I made the film in 2024. Thank you for taking that into consideration.

Bio : Nour is a Liberal Arts student at the University College in Freiburg. Born in France, she grew up between there and Jordan, shaped by a multicultural and multilingual environment. Deeply passionate about art and photography, she chose to blend her cultural heritage with creative expression, resulting in an archival, personal film on the Nakba and the question of exile.

Jury Award (program FUZZY BARBWIRE)

COUNTRY : Greece, France, Norway
YEAR : 2005
DURATION : 3m
DIRECTOR : Michel Pavlou
CONTACTS / LINKS :  https://michelpavlou.net   michel.pavlou   @michelpavlou  

Slices of life along the seashore, on a cloudy day on the Normandy coast;
A  single sequence generated by what resembles a lateral tracking shot
merges in a paradoxical continuous progression different viewpoints
unfolding the many-layered essence of the present moment

Space and time turn out to be malleable.

Bio : Michel Pavlou is an Oslo based Greek visual artist  and independent filmmaker. His works have been featured and awarded since 1990 in numerous exhibitions and festivals worldwide. He gained several grants, supports and fellowships for his visual researches from international institutions, including the Norwegian State’s Guaranty Income for Artists (since 2012). Pavlou’s visual/sound material  consists of scenes from everyday life processed in order to highlight the reversible relationships between present and  past, between fiction and reality.

Audience Award (program FUZZY BARBWIRE)

COUNTRY : Germany
YEAR : 2017
DURATION : 2m
ARTIST, DIRECTOR : Julia Herold
SOUND DESIGN : Mengxuan Sun

CONTACTS / LINKS :  https://juliaherold.de    @julhrd 

Skopeîn, from the ancient Greek meaning “to look closely,” opens a view through the microscope that enables you to see the inner life of the plants, details which we can’t see with our human eye. Growth, withering, decomposition will be shown in minutia.

Director statement : In Skopeîn, I explore the hidden dimensions of plant life by observing botanical specimens through a microscope. This close examination reveals structures, movements, and transformations that remain invisible to the unaided eye. I have long been fascinated by the small and the unseen, by the moments and materials that lie just beyond our everyday perception. Plants, in particular, hold a fragile temporality: their beauty, their decay, and the rapid shifts that occur as they grow and wither have always drawn my attention. Through magnification, these transitions become tangible, unfolding at a scale where their complexity can be witnessed with newfound clarity.

The specimens were deliberately altered through the application of water and chemical substances, causing the plants to distort, dissolve, or reorganize themselves. These interventions expose unfamiliar visual qualities—unexpected colours, delicate ruptures, collapsing structures—that reveal another side of botanical beauty. What appears stable or harmonious at first glance becomes, under the microscope, a dynamic landscape shaped by constant transformation. This process highlights both the vulnerability and resilience inherent in organic matter.

The sound accompanying the work was recorded directly during the microscopic observations, capturing the subtle mechanical noises produced by the instrument itself. These recordings, with their repetitive clicks, shifts, and vibrations, introduce an acoustic dimension to the visual examination. They were later developed further in a sound design by Mengxuan Sun, who wove the raw textures into a composition that mirrors the microscale processes seen on screen. The result is a sensory field in which image and sound mutually reinforce the act of close looking.

Through these combined elements, Skopeîn reflects on how beauty persists, destabilises, and reconfigures itself at scales and moments usually beyond human perception

Bio : Julia Herold is a visual artist based in Berlin. She studied Moving Image at the Berlin University of the Arts. Her practice engages with everyday life, both in content and material, often focusing on small, overlooked segments of the familiar. She works across installation, video, painting, and photography, frequently reinterpreting ordinary objects and processes by placing them in new contexts or observing them from unexpected perspectives. Themes of transience and transformation recur throughout her work, as she explores how the seemingly mundane can shift, decay, or take on new meaning when examined differently. Her works have been presented in various group exhibitions.

Jury and Audience Awards (program REFLECTIONS IN A WATER DROP)

LANGUAGE : Serbian
COUNTRY :  Yugoslavia (Serbia), USA
YEAR : 2025
DURATION : 14m
DIRECTOR : Alex Djordjevic
GRANDFATHER :  Avgustin Vrhovsek (himself)

CONTACTS / LINKS : alexdjordjevic.com    @alexdjordjevicphotos

Visiting my grandfather for one last weekend.

Director statement : As a documentary filmmaker, I believe that the most powerful stories are found in our own communities.

Bio : Alex Djordjevic has worked as a cinematographer, producer, and photographer, with a focus mainly on social and environmental issues.

Special Mention (program REFLECTIONS IN A WATER DROP)

Due to distribution constraints, the film cannot be streamed at this time.

LANGUAGE : Spanish
COUNTRY : Spain, USA
YEAR : 2025
DURATION : 26m
DIRECTOR, PRODUCER, EDITOR : Begonya Plaza-Rosenbluth
WRITER : Jesus Plaza
CAST : Jesus Plaza (himself)

CONTACTS / LINKS :  YouTube   vimeo   @begobud

Over morning coffee, Begonya's 95 year-old father responds to her questions about his childhood memories in the early 1930's. Aita's visceral recollections begin in Barakaldo, Bizkaia of northern Spain where he was born during the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, and continue on through the family's escape to France, Barcelona, and back again to Euskadi's recently bombed holy town of Gernika. His painful, tender and humorous recollections are palpable, as he describes the growing-up pains to overcome tragedies and  make something of his life, magically sprinkled with significant true friendships that made all the difference in his world.

Dedication : This short film is dedicated to my father as a thank you gesture for not only giving me my precious life, but also for his strong beautiful influence, and the lessons he taught me as I watched him adventure-on through, at times with indomitable courage, and at other times with enormous fear, but at all times with a devoted love for his family.

Director statement : Curiosity is what drives me, and a desire to understand how the complex mechanisms of humanity work. I believe in the power of story telling to remind us of our innate divine power, and to connect, inspire, awaken, and transform one another. I always aim to infuse my creative work, and life with the energetic potency of love.

Bio : Begonya Plaza-Rosenbluth is an accomplished American theatre, television, and film actor/singer, filmmaker, and published author. Her full-length play Teresa's Ecstasy premiered Off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre, published by Broadway Play Publishing, Inc. Begonya's poems are published in many literary magazines, and poetry book anthologies.

Jury Award (program ENJOYING THE SHOW?)

Due to distribution constraints, this film is only available upon request from the artist (email below).

LANGUAGE : English
COUNTRY : Canada
YEAR : 2022
DURATION : 10.5 minutes
DIRECTOR : MilleFeuille

CONTACT : MilleFeuilleFound@outlook.com

In a quiet residential neighbourhood, the tension between domestic, wild and work animals is caught on home security camera, recorded through windows and souvenired in old postcards. 

A found-footage piece made as a reaction to the internet's obsession with pets, The Kittens' Tea Party allegorizes speciesism. [ & alludes to home invasion fear, nature’s revenge, settler colonialism ]

Director statement : MilleFeuille confections pre-existing, found footage into metaphors about ambient cruelty and decadent melancholia. Clips of random daily life are recast as scenes imbued with mythic allusions, and familiar locations are transformed into paradoxical spaces. The intention is not to subsume the original footage and its first context into a singular narrative or message, but rather to inhabit the slippery terrain of found-footage multivalence.

Bio : MilleFeuille is named after a famous 'thousand leaves' pastry whose origin is unknown because like windblown leaves drifting over lands and through time, the 'thousand leaves' pastry is an eternal remix. The name illustrates not only MilleFeuille’s work process but also their disregard for conventional ideas of authorship.

Audience Award (program ENJOYING THE SHOW?)

LANGUAGE : English
COUNTRY : Canada
YEAR : 2025
DURATION : 9m
DIRECTOR, CONCEPT, EDITOR : Lisa Birke
PERFORMER : Lisa Birke

CONTACTS / LINKS :  http://lisabirke.com/    @birke.lisa   Lisa Birke – The Experimental Film Podcast   Lisa Birke - TimeShare 2021 Mentor    Unlocking Creativity: The Power of Striving for Failure | Lisa Birke | TEDxUniversityofSaskatchewan

A contemporary parody that stages the death of an aging subject through the infinity mirror of social media tropes.

Director statement : I am fascinated by how identity is formed through mimicry, memes, and mirroring on social media. The Big Bloom Drop (Death by Selfie) is an exaggerated reflection of how the obsessive representing of self are enacted in this space, as well as parodying the irrelevancy of an aging female subject in popular media in general. My all-knowing algorithm is telling me to avoid aging at all costs; however, we know we have to resign ourselves to the inevitability of it and in the end, all efforts are futile.

I am actually becoming increasingly concerned about our self-focused society, where the easy entitlement of "I deserve this" is the norm during a time when we should be extending care to others and the planet. Although this isn’t explicitly stated in the film, I hope that my critique is present implicitly and felt throughout.

The Big Bloom Drop (Death by Selfie) was shot using an insta360 x series camera in bullet time, action and 360 modes. This was supplemented by 3D photogrammetry scans of flowers that I made at the shooting location that were composited into the footage in Blender. I also incorporated moments of AI,  special effects that I generated on green screens, as well as the 5-second split screen shots of vases dropping near the end. The rest of the film was shot on my Lumix G DSLR camera and edited using Adobe Premiere, Audition, After Effects and Blender. The entire film was shot on location during an artist residency in the Eagles Estate in Deer Lake Park in Burnaby (just outside of Vancouver) in Canada.

Bio : Lisa Birke is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is a collision of video, performance art, and expanded media practice. She is interested in how repeated representations and narratives inform our conception of the world and the tragi-comic perception of ourselves. Recently, Birke has been exploring immersive multi-media approaches using special effects, AR, and 360 video. 

Her award-winning video work has seen more than 100 screenings and installations at film festivals, media centers and in galleries/museums internationally, including Vancouver International Film Festival, Slamdance Film Festival, Florida Film Festival, Arizona International Film Festival, International Short Film Week Regensburg, Stuttgarter Filmwinter Festival for Expanded Media, and the Remai Modern along with many others. Birke is Associate Professor of Digital and Extended Media in the School for the Arts at the University of Saskatchewan.

SOURCES : Creative Commons sound clips used in the audio editing:

• Joyful Vibrance by Universfield -- https://freesound.org/s/761766/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
• Joyful Upbeat Pop for Celebrations by LolaMoore -- https://freesound.org/s/767378/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
• Happy Commercial Music by Seth_Makes_Sounds -- https://freesound.org/s/674939/ -- License: Creative Commons 0
• Upbeat & Quirky Retro Vibe (30s) by Universfield -- https://freesound.org/s/755870/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
• OtherWorlds 1 by RokZRooM -- https://freesound.org/s/508005/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
• Gloomy Atmosphere for Trailers and Movies by Universfield -- https://freesound.org/s/713224/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
• Dancehall simple clean beat (part 2) by Khong_Ten -- https://freesound.org/s/607898/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
• Clean Hiphop Beat.wav by Khong_Ten -- https://freesound.org/s/636008/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

Jury Award (program RIVER OF URD, VERDANDI, AND SKULD)

LANGUAGE : Spanish
COUNTRY : Mexico
YEAR : 2024
DURATION : 12m
DIRECTOR, SCREENWRITER,
PRODUCER : Patricio Escartín
DOP : Berenice Moreno
EDITOR : Luis Sánchez
SOUND DESIGN : Daniel Alejandro
PRODUCTION DESIGN : Xánath Rojas
MUSIC : Daniel Prieto
CAST : Alfonso Estrada

CONTACTS / LINKS :  @pat.escartin  @elruidodeltiempo.documental
 https://filmfreeway.com/PatricioEscartin   Facebook   YouTube

In the town of Xoco, the spirit of an old villager awakens in search of its lost home. Along its journey, the ghost discovers that the town still celebrates its most important festivities, but also learns that the construction of a new commercial complex called Mítikah will threaten the existence of both the traditions and the town itself.

Director statement : The Noise of Time stems from my desire to explore the emotional state of someone who has lost almost everything they once knew and considered to be their life. Yet despite such a loss, this person comes to realize that the meaning of life lies in those moments tied to family, to the everyday, to the things that, in one way or another, connect them to home. Long before I even knew who my protagonists would be, I was certain of one thing: I wanted to make a documentary capable of immersing the viewer in an emotional state that would move them. I believe that cinema which does not move us or shake us to our core lacks the transformative power that every work of art must have, where its audience, after experiencing it, cannot remain indifferent.

The conflict between Mítikah and Xoco represents, to me, a clear example of what’s happening nationwide with our past, with our traditions. Mítikah boasts a supposed "Mexicanness" by referencing pre-Hispanic cultures through its murals and sculptures, yet it disregards those who came first. It has no shame in having cut down over 80 trees along Real Mayorazgo, only to replace them with artificial trees that now decorate the interior of the mall. Little by little, it drives out the original inhabitants of Xoco, through problems like water shortages and gentrification. In the end, I couldn’t ignore such a major conflict and yet, it’s surprising how many people are unaware of the issue simply due to ignorance.

Bio : Patricio Escartín is a filmmaker who graduated from the Bachelor’s in Cinematography at the National School of Cinematographic Arts (ENAC-UNAM) in Mexico, with an academic exchange at the University of Essex, UK. His documentary The Noise of Time (2024) has been officially selected at over 40 international film festivals and showcases, and was recognized by the Mexican journal El Universal as part of “The Best of Mexican Cinema 2024.

Audience Award, Special Mention (program RIVER OF URD, VERDANDI, AND SKULD)

COUNTRY :  Canada
YEAR : 2025
DURATION : 3m
DIRECTOR : mystery byrd
FEATURING : Jake Tuesday, Mystery Byrd, Ben Tuesday, Mariza Vieira, Charli, Sierre, Heather Freeland, Eli, Benedict, Claire Wilson, Lamar McGriggs, Doreen Wilson, Jill Wilson and Percy Tuesday, Stuart Freeland, Moon
MUSIC : Mystery Byrd, Vincent Allen, Ben Tuesday, Jake Tuesday, Mariza Vieira, For Bizhiw, Vera Moon, Tuesday-Byrd

With Support from the Winnipeg Film Group

CONTACTS / LINKS : @mysteryy.vsa

A home video, dedicated to my baby.

Director statement : Made as part of the Winnipeg Film Group's "Super 8 Special" film incubator. This picture was captured on super 8 film, drip dyed with a mixture of india ink and water collected from Lake Winnipeg, then digitized and captured on VHS.

Bio : Mystery byrd, aka chrussy, is a queer artist and film worker based on Treaty One territory with a lifelong background in DIY moviemaking and over 16 years of industry experience. They have functioned in such roles as writer, director, editor, actor, camera op, production assistant, location scout and assistant locations manager.

Experimental production styles inspired by grassroots organizing, philosophy through montage and video as archive are core concepts in mystery’s work and outlook, as well as themes of history, economics, colonialism, community, relationships, gender and sexuality. They continue to shoot, cut and develop works.

Jury Award (program THE LOST ABILITY TO SPEAK)

LANGUAGE : Chinese - Min Nan
COUNTRY : Taiwan
YEAR : 2024
DURATION : 13m
DIRECTOR : Federico Trasparente Montaresi 

CONTACTS / LINKS :  www.trasparente.cloud   INSIDEART   @trasparente__   vimeo  

RAW is a sensitive exploration of a bloody environment where Taiwanese butchers work with skill and meticulous precision. Set on Formosa Island in Taizhong city, the film follows Jack The Black Knife and his team as they cut 300 pigs every night, revealing a performative mastery that borders on ritual. The butchers’ work is simultaneously cruel and authentic, showing a primitive and ancestral form of artistic expression where matter itself becomes a statement of being, devoid of rhetoric.

Director Statement : With RAW, I aimed to capture an unfiltered encounter with labor, skill, and instinct. The Taiwanese butchers’ nightly practice is violent, precise, and ritualistic, yet through their work emerges a kind of unconscious artistry. I wanted to explore how intense, repetitive actions can transform matter into expression, and how the body, tools, and environment together create an experience that is both brutal and authentic. RAW is not about narrative or metaphor, but about presenting a direct, sensory, and ritualized engagement with the act of creation itself, where cruelty and precision meet in a strangely poetic form.

Bio : Federico Trasparente Montaresi is an Italian filmmaker and researcher exploring extreme and immersive audiovisual experiences. His works focus on ritual, corporeality, and performative precision, often highlighting intense human practices and environments. He has presented projects internationally, examining the boundary between instinctive action and artistic expression. Montaresi’s practice spans video, installation, and experimental cinema, with a focus on confronting viewers with raw and direct sensory experiences. 

Audience Award (program THE LOST ABILITY TO SPEAK)

LANGUAGE : English
COUNTRY : Australia
YEAR : 2024
DURATION : 12m
DIRECTOR : Jake Starr

CONTACTS / LINKS :   https://www.jakestarr.xyz   @j.starr.io    https://www.syrupcontemporary.com/jake-starr   

Within the ordered infrastructures of human civilisation, society endeavors to minimise the existential uncertainties of human survival to a minimum. The sidewalk, the fence, the clearing - each serve as a boundary, a tacit agreement between the human and non-human world: a contract stipulating that neither shall cross these thresholds without becoming subject to the law of the other. These spatial and symbolic thresholds represent an attempt to contain nature, to insulate ourselves from its unpredictable vitality.

A Weak & Panicked Animal gathers an unsettling archive of CCTV footage, police body-camera recordings and news reports depicting encounters between wild deer and human settlements. These images, charged with unease, confusion and often violence, form a portrait of territory in crisis. As the matrix of popular media mediates our conceptions of nature and civilisation, it can also disrupt them, revealing the porosity of borders between human and non-human realms and the fragility of the anthropocentric systems we rely on to assert control over the natural world.

Drawing on Anna Tsing’s concept of “contamination” - the idea that interspecies encounters inevitably alter and destabilise our relation to the natural world - these deer become agents of disruption. Their presence forces a collision between the contradictory forces of constructed order and ecological spontaneity. As they breach the material and symbolic fortifications of human society - shattering storefront glass, storming school halls, thrashing through offices - the illusion of a clear division between human society and the wilds of nature is violently dissolved.

What emerges from these confrontations is not merely spectacle, but a moment of ontological rupture. These animals - often perceived through the matrix of media as gentle, passive, picturesque - become emissaries of an ecological will to power. In their panic and confusion, we see reflected our own vulnerability, precarity and ultimately, our utter entanglement within an ecosystem we have fooled ourselves into believing we have mastered. 

A Weak & Panicked Animal asks what happens when the margins of the wild breach the heart of civilisation, when systems of surveillance and security fail to uphold the fantasy of human dominion and we are confronted with the primal apathy of nature. In doing so, the work reveals how deeply human civilisation depends on denial: denial of contingency, denial of interdependence, denial of the fact that no matter how sterile or secure our human bastions become, they are still enmeshed in a planetary ecosystem indifferent to the whims of humankind.

Bio : Jake Starr is a research-based artist residing on unceded Gadigal land (Sydney, Australia). Starr’s practice yearns across new media, sculpture, film and text, toward speculative post-human futures. Much of their process involves the collation and appropriation of often disregarded ideas, data and intelligences in order to formulate new and surprising relational ecologies. Characterised by strange syntheses, Starr’s research is informed by the frameworks of post-structuralism, affect theory and queer ecology as much as the seemingly frameless, fringe stirrings of furry fandom, conspiracy theories and technological accelerationism. Their work often operates within zones of friction or slippage, between embodied and disembodied, natural and synthetic, science and fantasy; creating webs of intimacy between seemingly disparate im/materialities which work to evoke imaginaries that exist beyond the constrictions of historical grand narratives and anthropocentric hegemony.

Jury Award (program LONELINESS IN AN ENVELOPE)

LANGUAGE : Farsi
COUNTRY :  Iran
YEAR : 2024
DURATION : 13m
DIRECTOR, WRITER : Marziye Feyli
PRODUCER : Mohammad Feyli
CAST : Sarina Shoja / Shirin Rezaei / Mahoor Fahami
CINEMATOGRAPHER : Amir Khosrow Salehi
EDITOR : Kaveh Ghahreman
SOUND DESIGNER : Peyman Vahedi
SOUND RECORDIST : Kavoos Aghaei
COMPOSER : Arad Asgari
SET DESIGNER : Reza Arabi
COSTUME DESIGNER : Marziye Feyli
COLOUR CORRECTION : Arash Kazem zadeh
MAKE-UP ARTIST : Mahboobeh Olia

CONTACTS / LINKS : @marziyefeyli

Nora, a 16 - year - old student, who won the first stage of the school drawing competition, has been selected as a school representative to enter the second stage. Nora feels anxious and worried when she faces the situation, looking for an excuse to exclude herself from the competition. 

Suddenly, her eyes catch a plaster on Sepideh’s hand, her friend’s. At the same time, the school headmistress' words about the cracked and broken mirror in the lavatory come to her mind as a motivation. 

After the class break, she secretly enters the lavatory and breaks the mirror with an iron bar, which she found among debris at the corner of the schoolyard. She picks up a piece of broken glass and cuts her hand. 

This incident exempts her from the competition. But encounter with this situation causes numerous psychological problems for her when the truth surfaced.

Director Statement : I believe a society that respects women and children equally is truly respectful. Ignoring women stems from patriarchal views, while ignoring children reflects both patriarchal and matriarchal biases. Filmmakers should provoke thought rather than offer solutions, as raising awareness helps society address social and psychological issues.

Nora, the protagonist of Crack, faces a problem rooted in a lie that triggers deep psychological struggles, leading her to self-inflicted wounds to escape an unbearable burden. The initial idea for the film came from my own past personal experience, which inspired me to explore these themes. More than anything, I wanted to focus on the lack of genuine relationships and interaction, especially between children and their divorced parents.

In our society, dialogues are fading even among close family members, causing irreparable emotional damage. Nora’s mother is absent emotionally, and this absence isolates her further. Nora tries to imitate her mother and fill the gap by lying, seeking the connection she lacks. The mother’s drawing of Nora does not reflect her true inner self; the cracked mirror in the final scene reveals Nora’s real image. The crack symbolizes her hidden emotions that have never been seen or acknowledged.

This film holds a special place in my artistic portfolio, as addressing children’s and teenagers’ struggles has always been central to my work. Crack is an attempt to pose critical issues rather than solve them, inviting audiences to reflect on the delicate emotional worlds of young people and the consequences of emotional neglect.

Bio : Marziye Feyli (b. 1988, Iran) is an Iranian filmmaker, actor, and editor. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Theater Directing and Acting from Tehran University of Art and a Master’s degree in Acting from Tarbiat Modares University.

She began her artistic career in 2011, performing in twelve stage plays and ten short films, while directing two plays and two experimental short films, "Untitled (100 words)" and Prowl"."

After graduating from the Iranian Youth Cinema Society in 2022, she has been working independently as a filmmaker, actor, and editor.

Her debut professional narrative short film, Crack, explores psychological and social issues, particularly focusing on the experiences and inner worlds of children and teenagers.

Audience Award (program LONELINESS IN AN ENVELOPE)

COUNTRY :  Italy
YEAR : 2025
DURATION : 11
DIRECTOR, WRITER, SOUND, ANIMATION : Massimiliano Marianni

CONTACTS / LINKS : https://massimilianomarianni.weebly.com    @massimiliano_marianni 

I don’t know if “Normal Litio” is the most personal work I’ve ever made so far but it’s definitely the least intuitive from a first viewing.

Each of my works is a step towards a self-analysis that doesn’t always reveal itself immediately; each work is a very personal visual/sound staging that sometimes (I hope) touches universal territories.

The theme of this work specifically is the inner crisis; starting from my experience of a moment of creative/emotional stasis in which I found myself paralyzed both from a human and artistic point of view.

On the threshold of 45 years of age and suffering from bipolar disorder, I wanted to sublimate the experience by merging, in real time, these themes into a single work. The film, in fact, starts from a block, from the impossibility of being able to get out of a room/prison that is only mental.

I tried to summarize my experience in an inner video journey that evolves into a catharsis.

Specifically, the protagonist, searching in his inner desert, finds his inner home, the home of his inner child. In an attempt to reconnect with him, to awaken him, he kills his dark side that keeps him stuck in this mental state of inner apathy.

Inside the story there are many elements whose meaning I do not want to constrain, such as the figure of the woman or the egg and the horse, leaving a margin of work open to its translation.

Bio: Massimiliano Marianni is an audio/visual artist, independent and self-taught.

Since 2014 his graphic work has been informed by a media research that leads him to the first short videos: analogic animations inserted in video installations using, in some cases, videomapping.

The use of digital is becoming more insistent and becoming peripheral heather cornerstone of the works to come, the tools he creates are filtered by digital software become inputs tuning distortion between the user and the sometimes performative work.

Jury and Audience Awards (program EFFICIENCY FIRST)

LANGUAGE : English
COUNTRY : USA
YEAR : 2020
DURATION : 06m
DIRECTOR / WRITER : Martin Del Carpio
ANIMATION AND COLLAGE ART : Nikola Gocic
PRODUCER : Martin Del Carpio
COMPOSER : Sharif Sehnaoui

CONTACTS, LINKS : @martin_del_carpio   Martin Del Carpio    vimeo

In another time, in a different world, mankind has made progress . . .  Ruled by the very AI they developed and employed to set them free, humans have become slaves to their machine. We have lost friendship, love, and sex, and we are the machine labor and means of production. In a tomorrow-land without touch or value, a future very much of our making, upon which human life is transaction and output, we have lost humanity. The AI, the machine, has put us to work, and we humans do not work without it. We labor and toil for calculations and machinations logical and unfeeling, having forgotten one another and ourselves.

Yet there are the Los: the most human of us, ostracized, exiled, and refuted by the rest for knowing nature and refusing to resist intimacy and the intangible connections of life. It is the Los who would free mankind to return to their humanity and to become again the collective “we” of individuality, of love, of freedom from artificial design. The Los will go to war for the humans who were not and for the humans they are, but . . . will they save us?

Bio : Martin Del Carpio is a filmmaker based in New York. His creative output started with music and with time, slowly progressed into filmmaking without any formal training or education.

His cinematic journey began by utilizing his instincts with the experimental genre making short films such as Howl, The Dark Forest, Auricular Confession, Mother's Milk and LOS. Those works have been selected and won at film festivals such as Coney Island Film Festival, Queens World Film Festival, The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, New Jersey Film Festival at Rutgers University and many others.

With his last couple of film projects such as The Double Room, Why Are You Still Dreaming (Human)? and I Exist, he has ventured into writing his own scripts and creating short films that are still artistic but with a more narrative edge hopefully taking us on a journey to places all the same unexplored.

Special Mention (program EFFICIENCY FIRST)

LANGUAGE : English
COUNTRY : Australia
YEAR : 2025
DURATION : 4m
DIRECTOR, CONCEPT, EDITING, SOUND : Ian Gibbins

CONTACTS / LINKS : www.iangibbins.com.au   vimeo  Ian Gibbins: poetry / music / science  @iangibbins52 

'im an' 'im an' me a'ways in wide-blue out low-a-drift clou's all windfeath'ry

The Yellow-tailed Black Cockatoo (Calyptorhyncus funereus) has a distinctive, relaxed loping flight and a loud plaintive call: "why-eeela, weee-la". It feeds on the seeds of diverse trees including eucalypts, banksias and hakeas. Much of this habitat has been destroyed or degraded by human activity. However, the cockatoos are often seen around the outer suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia, feeding on seeds in the cones of introduced Monterey Pines (Pinus radiata) planted along roadsides and in parks and gardens.

As a yellow-tailed black cockatoo searches for food and missing companions in urban deserts, we hear fragments of its calls...

Director statement : I often see these magnificent birds flying around, usually after being alerted to their presence by their unique calls. The idea for the video came from watching some interacting with their keeper in an aviary at the Adelaide Zoo. What were they thinking? What were they trying to say? The text for the video is in a dialect I invented in an attempt to match the cadences of the cockatoos' calls. The limited colour palette of black white and yellow in the video matches that of the birds. All the locations are either in or were within the original habitat of the cockatoos.

Bio : Ian Gibbins is a poet, video artist and electronic musician living in South Australia. His poetry has been widely published in Australia and overseas, and includes four books. His award-winning poetry videos, video art and soundscapes have been exhibited to acclaim at festivals, installations, galleries and public art displays around the world. Until he retired in 2014, Ian was an internationally recognised neuroscientist and Professor of Anatomy at Flinders University, South Australia.

Jury Award (program THORNS IN A BOOK)

COUNTRY :  Czech Republic
YEAR : 2025
DURATION : 4m
DIRECTOR : Tigran Abramjan, Andran Abramjan
CAMERA, EDITING, SOUND : Andran Abramjan
MUSIC : Tigran Abramjan, Andran Abramjan

CONTACTS / LINKS : abramjan.com   Tigran Abramjan   @a._tig 

We enter a space where entry is officially prohibited. Over the course of five years, we have observed the spontaneous transformations of this environment – ​​contrasts between absolute emptiness and overwhelm, where one substance spills over into another: concrete, graffiti and manure. The observer brings another dimension to this remarkable gallery, where unique connections emerge, functioning as works of art. Each new visit seems like a different exhibition opening.

Bios :  

Tigran Abramjan focuses primarily on painting, graphics, sculpture but also on video and installations. In his work, he often explores the interaction between unknown reality and the physical world. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions and biennials (Palais des Nations Geneve, Florence Biennale, Triennale Krakow etc.) and is held in both public and private collections. He received a number of international awards.

Andran Abramjan is a documentary and experimental filmmaker. His films were shown at various festivals including Rotterdam IFF, Clermont-Ferrand ISFF, Cinema du Réel or Ji.hlava IDFF.

Audience Award (program THORNS IN A BOOK)

LANGUAGE : Slovenian
COUNTRY :  Slovenia
YEAR : 2024
DURATION : 14m
DIRECTOR, EDITOR : Neža Jamnikar
DOP : James Risbey
SOUND DESIGN : James Risbey
DANCERS : Gea Erjavec, Simona Kočar, Kaja Marion Ribnikar, Kristina Slapernik, Katarina Bogataj, Neža Jamnikar
PERFORMERS : Janja Habe, Darja Jamnikar, Lidija Lončarič
TEXT AND VOICE : Neža Jamnikar
ORIGINAL MUSIC (lyrics: folk song): Brina & String.si - 'Pobelelo polje'
MUSICIAN (folk song): Janja Habe
Financially supported by the Municipality of Velenje, Culture Moves Europe, and donators.

CONTACTS / LINKS : @nezajamnikar

BÁJANJE is a short experimental film in which author Neža Jamnikar explores elements of Slovenian folklore through movement and a fantastical tale. The focus of the research is on the intertwined interpretations of motifs from Slovenian folk dances, music, old-faith (pagan) rituals, and symbols, which are experimentally woven into the physical and conceptual embodiments of the Krivopete and Vedomci—entities from Slovenian folklore and mythology—and are gradually revealed through the film’s fictional narrative.

On their journey toward “the knowing,” three women traverse hills and forests, twist their bodies, utter incantations, and make offerings. They dance around the maypole until, in their half-dream state, they hear incomprehensible words that guide them to the “other side of the sky.”

Director statement : BÁJANJE was created as the first part of a trilogy in which Neža Jamnikar explores themes of her own history and identity as a Slovenian (part i), an embodied memory of her family’s home country of Yugoslavia (part ii), and an exhilarating journey of re-imagining her becoming in this world (part iii).

BÁJANJE is a sort of homage to Slovenian folklore and the history of the development of Slovenian culture. As a dancer and choreographer, Neža’s main creative language in making this film is movement. As in all of her works, she undertook extensive theoretical research before production, reading numerous books and articles about Slovenian mythology, tales (and their characteristics and structures), symbolism, pagan rituals—many of which remain part of everyday life today, magical entities that dominate many fantastical stories, folklore dances and music, objects and places of significant importance to Slovenian culture and old-faith customs, etc. The third-person narration in the film draws its inspiration from the tale Nevidna stran neba in the book Iz nevidne strani neba, in which author Pavel Medvešček collected stories and information from Old Believers in the Posočje region of Slovenia about the Old Faith as a way of life as our ancestors lived it before Christianisation. The overall film structure and several specific movement sections were developed through research on circular movement—a pattern found in many Slovenian rituals and in other cultures, often leading to a trance state or ‘traveling between worlds’. The film was shot with a digital camera and almost entirely outdoors— with one location holding a special significance to my family’s personal history—while the closing section was filmed indoors and uses practical effects.

The film is dedicated to Neža’s oma (grandmother), with whom she was very close; she passed away a year before shooting began.

Bio : Neža is a freelance movement artist working at the intersection of live performance and film. She holds a BA in Dance and Choreography from the Dance Academy Ljubljana (Slovenia, 2014) and an MA in Contemporary Dance Performance from IWAMD, University of Limerick (Ireland, 2016).

She is deeply invested in creating an embodied archive of knowledge from various somatic practices and in combining those practices with improvisation to develop her movement praxis. Improvisation and instant composition are also central to her performance and film work. Her projects are research-based and collaborative, currently focusing primarily on ideas derived from socio-political spheres and psychological states.

Since 2009, Neža has (co)created, collaborated on, and performed in feature-length dance pieces, films, and short works with artists and companies across Slovenia, Europe, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. She has won awards for her solo dance work ‘Saudade’ and for the short films ‘Love, Instantly!’ and ‘BÁJANJE’.