Official Selection 2025
Winning Films
BEST ANIMATION: HURIKÁN
Dir: Jan Saska
Hurikán rushes out to save his favourite beer stand from closure by fetching a new keg to impress the bartender he has a crush on. In a wild Prague district, he faces robbers, cops, and his own thirst.
BEST CHANGE: DEADLOCK
Dir: Lucien Beucher & Mahdi Boucif
Sifou and Mahrez are childhood friends. Both are seventeen, both grew up in the district of Sidi Lekbir, in Algiers, and both have an older brother who fled to Europe. Lost between the bleak destiny promised by their neighbourhood and the uncertainty lurking on the horizon, they ask themselves: Can they break the deadlock?
BEST COMEDY: YEAH THE BOYS
Dir: Stefan Hunt
A satirical observation of Aussie masculine identity and drinking culture, this choreographic film scored by The Avalanches invites us to join six young men sinking beers over an afternoon and well into the night. Emoting only through movement, they somehow say everything without uttering a single word.
BEST DOCUMENTARY: INSTRUMENTS OF A BEATING HEART
Dir: Ema Ryan Yamazaki
First graders in a Tokyo elementary school are presented with a challenge for the final semester: to form an orchestra and perform ‘Ode to Joy’ at a school ceremony. An Oscar-nominated examination of the Japanese educational system’s tenuous balance between self-sacrifice and personal growth as it teaches the next generation to become part of society.
BEST DRAMA: VOX HUMANA
Dir: Don Josephus Raphael Eblahan
In the aftermath of an earthquake, the police find a man in the woods. A zoologist, a sound recorder, and a news team grapple with the truth that he may be the cause of all the natural disasters that devastated this small mountain town.
BEST MUSIC VIDEO: CLAP YOUR HANDS SAY YEAH - THE SKIN OF MY YELLOW COUNTRY TEETH
Dir: David Helman & Daniel Henry
A strip mall computer tech juggles glitchy gadgets, oddball clients, and a budding online romance - hoping that love, like tech, can be fixed with the right code.
BEST STUDENT FILM: THE SHYNESS OF TREES
Dir: Bingqing Shu, Jiaxin Huang, Lina Han, Loïck Du Plessis D’Argentré, Maud Le Bras, Simin He & Sofiia Chuikovska
Hélène visits her ageing mother in the French countryside, only to find that she isn't being her usual self; she seems to have formed a strange bond with the plants, insects, and the old oak tree at the end of her garden.
