Embedded Files
BEST SHORT FILM
The Grand Silver Chance Award
Logline: After losing his job, a grieving man must decide whether to play it safe or take a risk and reignite something from his past he abandoned.
The Creature’s Coda is inspired by my experience of being unemployed during a COVID lockdown. I found myself at a career crossroads and began addressing my own insecurities and anxieties about pursuing a creative career. In the end, I decided to channel those feelings into making this film.
Jio Williams (Director):
I wanted the story to capture the reflective moments of someone navigating a transition while tackling themes of career anxiety and grief and seeing how these could intersect. I was interested in the tension between taking risks and staying in one’s comfort zone and how different people define meaningful and fulfilling work. I also wanted to explore grief, not just in terms of losing a person, but also losing a dream or a passion and what it might look like to reconnect with those things.
The Creature’s Coda is my first written and directed project since graduating from film school in 2015 and it feels very fitting that it serves as my reintroduction to filmmaking as a writer-director
The Silver Chance Award
Logline: In a North London boxing gym ruled by boys, an 11-year-old girl trains with fierce resolve. When she’s shut out, she makes a bold, heartbreaking gesture that forces everyone to see her, a raw, poetic portrait of girlhood, grief, and resilience.
Antony Petrou (Director):
The Fight is my most personal film to date.
Inspired by my daughter’s real-life experiences as a young boxer, the film began with a simple question: what does it mean to fight when no one will face you? I wanted to capture the quiet, daily resilience of a girl who shows up, trains, and refuses to be ignored, not with spectacle, but with presence.
As a Cypriot filmmaker drawn to stories of identity, silence, and resistance, I’m always searching for the emotional core beneath the surface. This story felt urgent, not because it’s loud, but because it’s real. We shot with non-actors, in real gyms, drawing from lived experience and instinct rather than performance.
At just 8 minutes, The Fight aims to distil something fierce and raw about girlhood, grief, and the rituals we build to survive. It’s about the space between violence and healing, and the quiet power of making yourself seen.
The Iron Chance Award
Logline: A group of climate refugees, most of whom have disabilities, have made a home of an abandoned house.
They live, cook, laugh, cry, eat, dance and work the land together, feeling like a family while feeling vulnerable to the hostile outside climate. A wild storm arrives and one of the group has to leave.
Director - Ray Jacobs
Ray Jacobs is a UK based artist who uses the mediums of image, film and movement to highlight the beauty, power, magic and presence in the stories that surround us and are within us.
Ray is a director and facilitator, creating imaginative and powerful works with a wide variety of companies, in particular collaborating with disabled artists.
Rays background is in dance and performance, trauma from a hereditary heart condition in his thirties led him to begin creating work away from the stage and create visual stories on film.
Recent multi award winning short films include ‘The Sea Reminds Me’, ‘Bastion’, Four Solos in the Wild, Your Rocky Spine, The Secret Life of Tom Lightfoot, The Secret Life of Astrid North
The Iron Chance Award
Director Biography - Moein Rooholamini
Mohammad Moein Rooholamini, born in 1993 in Kashan, has a bachelor's degree in accounting.
He started his artistic activity in 2015 and the short film the city of honey is his first professional experience in short film..
Honors: Attending 180 international festivals and winning 65 awards, some of which include:
Award for Best Film from the 12th Entredodos Festival in Brazil
Special Jury Prize for the first role of a film from the Andaras Film Festival in Italy
Award for Best Film at the Toronto New Wave Festival in Canada
Award for Best Actor at the Alba Film Festival in Italy
First prize of the 22nd spot marano ragazzi festival in Italy
Director Statement
I dedicate this film to children all over the world who do not give up on their sweet dreams in the most difficult situations of their lives.
BEST STUDENT SHORT FILM
The Grand SIlver Chance Award
Production: Austria, Germany
Long Synopsis: STUPORIA is a deeply personal LGBTQIA+-themed story about a dancer who is forced to stop dancing after surviving a violent attack in a park. The film follows his emotional and physical recovery throughout a day as he finds the strength to heal and dance one last time. At its core, the film explores trauma, resilience, and the quiet power of reclaiming one’s identity through movement and art.
Director Biography - Joshua Jádi
German-Hungarian director and writer. Berlinale Talents, Torino ScriptLab, Sarajevo Talents and Locarno Academy Summer School alumni as well as a member of the European Film Academy. His short films have travelled to over 50 festivals in the world.
The Silver Chance Award
Logline: An undocumented worker in a small restaurant tries to support her family back home. When a stranger arrives and the police get involved, her life takes an unexpected turn.
Director Biography - Sina Mahdavi
Sina Mahdavi is a filmmaker and writer. He is an MFA Film Production student at Ohio University. His short films include The Broken Chord and That Night.
Director Statement
In the ordinary streets of the city around us, the most tragic events happen every day under the skin of the city. This film is about those people, people who may not look like heroes from the movies, but through their daily struggle to survive, they are the real heroes of life.
The Iron Chance Award
Anja, a teenage girl, grows up in the shadow of her younger brother Finn's Tourette's, where daily life is shaped by his unpredictable tics and emotional outbursts. Torn between wanting to help him and needing his own space, she struggles with guilt and the silent burden of being the "glass child".
Director Biography - Anna-Katharina Schubert
Independent filmmaker from Cologne, Germany. Aspiring director and production designer with a passion for visual storytelling. Bringing empathy and curiosity into every project, Anna is driven by raw and honest stories that explore psychology, conflicts and the human experience.
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM
The Grand Silver Chance Award
Director Biography - Rose Movizzo
Rose Movizzo is a twenty-two-year-old filmmaker from Franktown, Colorado. She is currently a student at Aurora Community College. In school, she's specializing in post-production and is set to graduate in 2026.
Rose’s interest in filmmaking was piqued in middle school during which she spent a part of each summer in film camps offered by a local high school. She continued to make short films through high school before deciding that she wanted to pursue it as a career. After finishing her AAS in post-production, she hopes to find work as an editor and use that knowledge to help build her storytelling skills to eventually become a director.
Director Statement
I got diagnosed with FND in January of 2024, and it seemed like no one knew what it was. Doctors were included in that list. In fact, many of them dismissed my symptoms as psychogenic, or worse, as drug-seeking behavior.
Every time I had to explain my new diagnosis, I was met with blank stares and arched eyebrows. And if I were speaking to a doctor, there was regularly a response of an eye-roll or impatient sigh as they scribbled on their chart that I was crazy. Time and time again, I felt myself failing miserably to explain both the disorder and my experience with it.
I knew I was not the only person struggling in this way with FND, so I decided to do the only thing I knew how to: make a short documentary to help educate about the disorder.
BEST ANIMATED FILM
The Grand Silver Chance Award
A young autistic boy is raised alone from birth, almost without contact from his parents. His only companions throughout his life are his books, until he decides to face all his fears and overcome his limits, driven only by his passion and tireless curiosity.
Director Biography - NANO BOR
Director, escritor y animador de Stop Motion autodidacta, aficionado al cine y la fotografía.
Estoy dentro del espectro Autista (TEA) esto hace que perciba e interactue en el mundo de una manera diferente.
Comencé a realizar mis primeros trabajos de forma accidental en 2020 y a experimentar con diferentes materiales y formas.
Todos mis proyectos los realizo de forma integral, en mi casa y con recursos limitados, pero siempre, buscando contar una historia con mucha imaginación y curiosidad que pueda llegar a emocionar.
Self-taught director, writer and Stop Motion animator, film and photography fan.
I am on the Autism spectrum (ASD), which makes me perceive and interact in the world in a different way.
I started making my first works accidentally in 2020 and experimenting with different materials and shapes.
I carry out all my projects comprehensively, at home and with limited resources, but always seeking to tell a story with a lot of imagination and curiosity that can move people.
Director Statement
En cada proyecto aprendo algo nuevo que refleja una parte de mi en forma de arte, con la esperanza de conectar con el espectador.
In each project I learn something new that reflects a part of me in art form, in the hope of connecting with the viewer.
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