Under £500 Category Winners
Usurpst
Director/Writer/Producer – Sam Swann
Duration – 11:34
A theatre actor makes a vlog about the big opening night of Hamlet. But when he messes up his lines he fears it’ll make it into reviews. Even worse: nobody notices.
Under £1500 Category Winners
Words Left Behind
Director – Sachin Ladva
Producer – Sachin Ladva
Writer – Sachin Ladva
Duration – 5:30
Thirty years after a bittersweet romance, a lonely man unexpectedly meets the daughter of his former girlfriend, setting in motion a journey of reflection, connection, and the lingering echoes of the past.
Under £5000 Category Winners
Die Wendezeit (Time of Change)
Director – Boris Wolffgardt
Producer – Heike Wener von Niessen
Writer – Heike Wener von Niessen
Duration – 15:00
After the end of the Third World War, women have taken control and now steer the course of the world. In this era of matriarchy, two men are put on trial for violating the new system of values. They must answer before three female judges who embody the principles of their time: feminism, equality, and female leadership.
Criminal Helpline
Director/Writer – Robbie Mars
Producer – Oliver Johnson
Duration – 15:00
“Criminal Helpline” follows a disillusioned operator working for an underground call center that provides guidance to criminals in distress. As he fields calls ranging from drug deals to corpse disposal, his cynical humor masks a growing dissatisfaction with his lifestyle. When one call goes disastrously wrong, leading to a violent confrontation with a ruthless meth dealer known as Hangman, the operator is forced to fight for survival.
Amidst the chaos, he begins to question whether he can truly escape the world he’s built for himself. Darkly comedic and thrilling, the film explores morality, addiction, and the struggle to break free from a life full of dependance.
Best Animation Category Winners
The Error : Beyond Algorithm
Director – Dongkwan Kim
Producer – Dongkwan Kim
Writer – Dongkwan Kim
Duration – 9:41
In a near-future Seoul, algorithms decide everything — what to eat, where to go, and even who to love.
The male protagonist, a creature of the system like everyone around him, is matched with a woman at 95% compatibility. But the moment a 98% match appears on her screen, she leaves without hesitation. Walking home through a city full of people absorbed in their own algorithmic worlds, he feels the emptiness of a connection that never really existed.
Then, unexpectedly, a café. Warm, strange, unlike anything the algorithm would have recommended.
Inside, he meets her — the female protagonist, a café owner who pushes her own handwritten special menu in front of him before he can open an app, whose recommendations make no logical sense, and whose energy is somehow both chaotic and completely disarming. He fixes things around her café without being asked. She notices. Small moments accumulate into something neither of them can quite name.
Then the algorithm speaks: 23% compatibility.
What will become of the two of them?
Flower Bot
Directors – Celio Dubus
Margaux Hallot
Tiphaine Houdeau
Loïs Pastor
Marie Piazza
Clémence Thomire
Ludovic Vasse
Aurélia Zerhouni
Duration – 6:50
In a scorching hot desert, Betty, a young robot still grieving her kind, discovers a miraculous flower. To protect her, Betty will have to face the elements and her own attachments to the past…
Sub-Category Winners
Negligible Impact
Sound Design – Trevor Holland
Duration – 7:27
Annie
Actress – Pascale Caemerbeke
Original Film Score – Penny Lane
Duration – 8:43
Annie’s mind is failing her. Terrified of losing her most precious memory, she ventures to recreate it one last time, navigating the walls of her care home and the fog of a forgotten past.
Criminal Helpline
Director – Robbie Mars
Duration – 15:00
“Criminal Helpline” follows a disillusioned operator working for an underground call center that provides guidance to criminals in distress. As he fields calls ranging from drug deals to corpse disposal, his cynical humor masks a growing dissatisfaction with his lifestyle. When one call goes disastrously wrong, leading to a violent confrontation with a ruthless meth dealer known as Hangman, the operator is forced to fight for survival. Amidst the chaos, he begins to question whether he can truly escape the world he’s built for himself. Darkly comedic and thrilling, the film explores morality, addiction, and the struggle to break free from a life full of dependance.
Candy Shop
Director of Photography – Austin Desousa
Duration – 10:58
A minicab, stuck at a red light. Stop light starts with this basic scenario from the perspective of our passenger, an exhausted working man who is desperate to get home, and our driver, who’s mild manner seems to only irritate the passenger even more.
The passenger becomes disturbed by the fact that they’re “forced” to stop at the red light even though the street is entirely empty and it wouldn’t make a difference to anyone else in the world if they drove through to reach their destination sooner but the driver is reluctant to purely on the principle that ‘you stop when it says stop’.
What starts as a complaint spins out into a philosophical debate on morality, autonomy and consequences.
It Didn’t Happen To You
Director/Editor – Erica Bulman
Duration – 5:15
In this thought-provoking documentary, a seasoned journalist revisits the 1997 Luxor massacre — an attack she narrowly escaped, only to be assigned to cover it. Fifty-eight tourists were killed, including members of the tour group she was meant to join. Returning to her survivor interviews and the images she can’t unsee, she confronts the vicarious trauma and ethical knots of reporting on a tragedy that should have been hers. As she reckons with the profession’s insistence on detachment, she brings to light the personal price of bearing witness. A powerful examination of the human cost of reportage, the film invites viewers to look behind the headlines—and reflect on the complexities of empathy in a profession often seen as dispassionate.
The Woodcutter
Director/Writer – Carl Copeland
Producer – Saul Murphy
Duration – 14:23
Ray Jones has been a woodturner for over 65 years. He talks about his lifelong connection to the craft, the ups and downs he’s experienced, and the gradual decline of woodturning in modern-day Liverpool.
In this thought-provoking documentary, a seasoned journalist revisits the 1997 Luxor massacre — an attack she narrowly escaped, only to be assigned to cover it. Fifty-eight tourists were killed, including members of the tour group she was meant to join. Returning to her survivor interviews and the images she can’t unsee, she confronts the vicarious trauma and ethical knots of reporting on a tragedy that should have been hers. As she reckons with the profession’s insistence on detachment, she brings to light the personal price of bearing witness. A powerful examination of the human cost of reportage, the film invites viewers to look behind the headlines—and reflect on the complexities of empathy in a profession often seen as dispassionate.
Stop Light
Actor – David Sayers
Duration – 5:32
A minicab, stuck at a red light. Stop light starts with this basic scenario from the perspective of our passenger, an exhausted working man who is desperate to get home, and our driver, who’s mild manner seems to only irritate the passenger even more.
The passenger becomes disturbed by the fact that they’re “forced” to stop at the red light even though the street is entirely empty and it wouldn’t make a difference to anyone else in the world if they drove through to reach their destination sooner but the driver is reluctant to purely on the principle that ‘you stop when it says stop’.
What starts as a complaint spins out into a philosophical debate on morality, autonomy and consequences.
Die Wendezeit (Time of Change)
Producer – Heike Wener von Niessen
Duration – 15:00
After the end of the Third World War, women have taken control and now steer the course of the world. In this era of matriarchy, two men are put on trial for violating the new system of values. They must answer before three female judges who embody the principles of their time: feminism, equality, and female leadership.