News

ClujShorts Winners 2026

Best Screenplay Award
Awarded to the film Poor Me (Săraca de mine), Norway, written and directed by Liv Joelle Barbosa Blad, for its simultaneously humorous and dramatic portrayal of a family that manages to remain united despite the challenges they face.

Best Editing Award
Awarded to Nicolas Houver for the editing of the films Test Day (Jour de permis) and The Eco-Blasé (Les éco-blasés), France, in which he brilliantly achieved effects of surprise, suspense, shock, and comedy through a masterful articulation of cinematic shots.

Best Cinematography Award
Awarded to the film In a Thousand Petals (En mille pétales), directed by Louise Bongartz, Belgium, for the pictorial quality of the imagery, which blends colors, shapes, and textures to support a moving and poetic narrative.

Best Acting Award
Awarded to the duo Yankalle Filtser and Ihab Elias Salami for their performance in the film Samuel on the Sand (Samuel în deșert), directed by Mahmoud Abu Ghannam. In a parodic film filled with meta-cinematic allusions, they succeeded in building a human relationship that transcends beliefs and words, reaching toward the simplest gestures and the most mundane emotions.

Best Animation Award
Awarded to the film Dear End (Chère fin), directed by Khéma Cousin, Lien Franckel, Laora Le Boursicot, Alissende Masson, Joséphine Mounier & Clément Saden, France, for its exceptional visual qualities and the intelligent way it explores the end of the era of handwriting and letters alongside a potential ecological crisis.

Best Sound Award
Awarded to the film There Will Come Soft Rains (Vor veni ploi blânde), directed by Elham Ehsas, UK, for the care and precision used to construct its sonic universe and for the poetic effects generated through words, music, and silence.

Best Student Film Award
Awarded to the film The Things We Do For Love And A Foreign Passport, directed by Ayal Sgerski, Israel, for the maturity with which it handles the difficult themes of freedom and choice, successfully embedding grotesque and comic accents within the core of the most serious issues.

Press award

For the humor used to address grave issues such as the Holocaust, fleeing from war, and the relationship with an abusive system that behaves absurdly simply because it can. For bringing us closer to Kafka while offering solutions: language must remain here. For satirizing how social media can destroy our lives, especially when trying to cross borders. A film that, if it isn't already, will be inspired by true events. Also, for depicting a country that doesn't exist but is entirely possible, and the moral decisions we must make to escape hell. And because the past walks gloriously into the future, while dystopias are closer than we delude ourselves into thinking. For all these reasons, the Press Award goes to 'The Things We Do for Love and a Foreign Passport', Israel, 2025, directed by Ayal Sgerski."

Persona Association Award
Three Venezuelan women cross the border into Colombia to buy a packet of pasta.

Why do we award Pasta Negra, directed by Jorge Thielen Armand, a Canada-Colombia-Italy-Venezuela co-production?

We grant this award to the film "Pasta Negra" for the courage to transform the collapse of a nation into a disturbing sensory and human experience.

The film masterfully weaves together two obsessions of Venezuela: black pasta (the poor man's food, the symbol of shortage) and "La Mancha Negra" (the oily substance that devoured the roads of Caracas). The result is a visceral metaphor of a country melting under its own weight.

Inspired by the universe of Karina Sainz Borgo, the short film refuses the clichés of victimization. It highlights the fierce dignity of the women navigating through chaos, transforming survival into an act of pure resistance.

Director Jorge Thielen Armand captures not just an economic crisis, but an existential one, where the border between life and death is as thin and slippery as the hot bitumen on the highways.

"Pasta Negra" is awarded because it succeeds in giving a human face to a systemic tragedy, reminding us that, in the midst of darkness, the only remaining compass is desperate solidarity.

Jury Award
Awarded to the film What Do Dragons Eat? (Ce mănâncă dragonii?), directed by Álvaro León, Spain, for providing a timeless parable of courage that transcends its accurate and compelling recreation of Civil War-era Spain.

Best Director Award
Awarded to the film Golden Swingers (Swingers de aur), directed by Pol Aguilera, for a directorial vision that impeccably controls every aspect of the film within a dynamic, humorous narrative sustained by varying rhythms that perfectly match the situations described.

ClujShorts Trophy
Awarded to the film Leonardo, directed by Meka Ribera & Álvaro G. Company, for the relevance of the issues it raises and its visionary approach to the relationship between humans and Artificial Intelligence. Dynamic, well-paced, elegantly crafted, highly tense, and profoundly human, Leonardo fully deserves the Festival Trophy.

by Bogdan

Cluj Shorts 2025 Official Selection

by Bogdan