2026 Award Ceremony
Program
We would like to acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands and waterways of greater Melbourne, the Wurundjeri people, and the people of the Kulin Nation.
Best Acting
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From Mia Siodmok
7 Minutes of Brain Activity After Death’ follows the kaleidoscope of memory and emotion that unfolds in the brief window between life and death. As Eva's consciousness lingers in its final minutes, fragments of her life emerge in a dreamlike rush. Love intertwines with fear and reality dissolves into feeling, as the future Eva hopes for begins to blur.
The film traces the evolution of Eva and Lilah’s relationship through warm, golden-lit recollections– from the discovery and first love that carves Lilah’s place in Eva's final moments to the disillusionment that confronts the collapse of their edenic promise.
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From Sasha Byk Giroux
1890s, Sydney. In the dead of night, Evelyn, a young woman on rest cure from hysteria, is visited by a mysterious figure.
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From Oscar Li
After a dream where a talking bear tells her she has one more day to live, Katrina sets out to find a sense of meaning in the time she has left, all while the world around her hardly notices she is even there.
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From Corban Bruce
‘ENMESHED' is a drama that follows James, a teenager in his final year of high school, who finds himself stuffed into the boot of a car instead of at school. Tatjana, his mother, fears that James is being assaulted by his teachers and plans to get him away from them by kidnapping him.
On their forced road trip, James pretends to believe his mother’s delusions. However, the longer he goes along with her plan, the more disconnected from reality she becomes.
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From Max Stanner
Rural-born Isaac comes to Sydney to grow up fast—only to learn the city’s true rite of passage is fighting for a cupboard-sized studio with twenty strangers.
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From Alexandra Belcher
In a world where everyone's life is a movie, Seb, who is stuck in a drama, tries to add new genres to his clapperboard.
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From Xady Chang
After murdering his bride on the night of their wedding, a panicked groom races down a desolate backroad to dispose of her body before dawn. But as the miles disappear beneath his tires, unsettling phone calls, impossible visions, and a growing presence in the backseat begin to blur the line between reality and nightmare. Trapped alone with his guilt, he soon discovers that some truths refuse to stay buried. A supernatural horror thriller about guilt and the terrifying consequences of refusing to face the truth.
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From Keira O'Connor
‘Passion' is a short film exploring the emotional fatigue, relentless grind, and unwavering love for filmmaking. Told through the eyes of Emma, a young actress chasing success, the film reveals her sacrifices and unyielding hope despite the struggles of an industry where success feels just out of reach. Emma’s journey embodies the enduring love for storytelling, offering a tribute to creatives who give their all for the art, not fame. While focused on actors, 'Passion' speaks to the universal struggle of burnout and the pursuit of one's dreams.
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From Alice La
A late-night call to a train station's Lost & Found sends a woman spiralling through memory, regret, and the fragile hope of reconnection.
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From Tommy Truong
Following an arrogant, fame-hungry young Australian director convinced his breakthrough lies in premiering at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Obsessed with success but lacking talent and self-awareness, his disastrous filmmaking efforts end in rejection, forcing him to confront failure at a pre-screening of MIFF projects.
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From Olivia Khoo
Two roommates go on a quest to find their missing TV remote, accidentally discovering a void the lives within their couch cushions.
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From Carrie Biddle
A young woman’s perfect life is put on hold when she begins to transform back into her siren form, an affliction that begins to weigh heavily on her relationship with her fiancé and herself.
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From Braie and Veronica Bakar and Vedovato
An impulsive New Year’s kiss forces two best friends to answer whether one night is enough.
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From Alexander Young
When a man tries to enjoy his meal at a restaurant, he finds himself plagued by an inhospitable table.
Best Animation
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From Ryu Leon Yamada Nguyen
Two cursed pilots fight in rage over the Mediterranean, each desperately surviving the fight for their families to see them again. Losing their senses, they delve into insanity and choose to sacrifice their humanity in hopes of survival.
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From Stephen Liu
Ok, look… It’s World War 1, a bombed-out village in Northern France, and there’s this angry, old Australian digger picking a fight with a young boy soldier who’s just trying to look after his flock of messenger pigeons.
The thing is, the pigeon in question happens to be a 6ft man-pigeon of mysterious origins, and the old Soldier wants him dead.
But deep down, the man-pigeon dubbed ‘War Pige’ just wants to dance...
Adapted for animation by STUDIO_GFS Animation Studio, Griffith Film School, 2nd year class of 2025, based on the FLOCK comic book series published by Gestalt Comics, Australia.
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From Xavier Goh
An lone explorer wanders a desolate megastructure. Little does he know he is being watched.
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From Ariel Budiman
A short film about the significance of cultural burning in aboriginal communities in Australia
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From Christa Poh
A boy feels the pressure of his overly-enthusiastic dad’s wish for him to continue his swimming legacy.
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From Bronte Harrison
Court Jester Beatrix has fallen madly in love with her sweet Princess Aria. On the Queen's Jubilee, she has to have her, but how far will she go for love?
FOOL is an animated musical about desperation, desire, clowns, and a little bit of violence.
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From Kora Lee
Here and There explores a girl’s journey of adapting to a new country, struggling with loneliness, homesickness, and language barriers. An unexpected connection makes her realise that even in the most unfamiliar places, she is never truly alone.
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From Erin Kim & Casey Teoh
Ian and Sam go on a wild adventure through the wilderness. Unfortunately things don't go as planned as the responsible Ian hurts himself. Will Sam be there for Ian?
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From Kaitlyn Bacon
When the young wizard Scraggles goes to get a hat so he can graduate wizard school, he is met with an opposing wizard, Gimble, after the same hat. A magical battle ensues to see who comes out on top and is able to graduate.
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From Angelica Eugenia Wijaya
Unable to say no, a young girl is pulled into an unfamiliar world that tests her limits and leads her to discover her real identity.
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From Daien Ngeiw
A stray dog with a fascination for taking the train, his journey unfolding a story surrounding life and fate.
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From Lonna Khuu
A mechanical boy marked as a fugitive stumble into an unsuspecting toy shop, run by an eccentric toymaker who sees past his exterior, where he finds a sense of belonging among the discarded and rebuilt.
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From Ying Lei Zhang
A dancer wishes to soar beyond her eternal cage. But the key can only be found from deep within herself.
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From Sriti Das
Through the virality of social media, an influencer unwittingly promotes the spread of a parasitic fungus into the world.
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From Nishtha Gupta
Based on the animator's lived experience, "The Animator's Dilemma" explores the mental loops of anxiety, overthinking, and creative block that many artists face. Represented by a persistent red figure, these intrusive thoughts continually disrupt the animator's process, until the very force that causes paralysis ultimately pushes them back to create.
Best Cinematography
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From Isabel James
A lonely teenage boy finds a lost diary and falls for the girl he imagines wrote it, until her real self starts to get in the way…
Cooper’s life consists mostly inside his bedroom and inside his head. School is dull and life feels like something he has to simply drift through before getting to experience the real thing. Until Cooper discovers a lost artifact: the diary of a girl named Bo. In his imaginary world (and on screen), they fall in love. In his mind, he isn’t just reading her diary, he’s having real conversations with her. Sometimes they’re together in his world of leafy streets and his messy bedroom, making it a little less lonely. Other times they’re in her bombastic, kitsch, pastel coloured world, where for once, everything feels exciting. To Cooper, she is real, and someone who finally understands him.
Until Bo starts to withdraw, seemingly resenting the way he looks at her. Their relationship is getting complicated, and Bo calls Cooper’s real life behaviour into question. The fantasy is beginning to crack. And then, it shatters, when Cooper catches a glimpse of the real-life Bo in the street with her friends. But she isn’t the Bo he knows. She looks different, dresses different, acts different. She’s shy and regular, like him. She doesn’t know Cooper, and she definitely doesn’t love him. Staring at the real girl, who now stares back at him in unrecognition, Cooper realises that his fantasies were selfish, and that to finally experience the real thing, he needs to stop isolating himself from the real world and everyone in it. So, Cooper returns the diary to the stranger and leaves her be, choosing to let go of his dreams of someone who never existed.
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From Heidi Wilson
We’ve all imagined punching our boss before, but what would happen if someone took this to the next level? Darlene is just your ordinary, frustrated office worker trying to take things one day at a time. When she gets nominated for a prestigious work award, Darlene finally has something to look forward to - if only she can keep her anger in check.
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From Allegra Croome
A young girl, haunted by the loss of a close friend, runs frantically through a dense forest, desperate to escape an unseen force that seems determined to catch her. As fear and confusion begin to consume her, fragments of the past filter through, revealing memories of a love filled friendship cut short and the debilitating grief that follows. With each desperate step, the line between reality and memory begins to blur, forcing her to confront the emotions she has spent so long avoiding.
As the pursuit nears its end, the girl discovers that the force that had been chasing her was not a stranger but a manifestation of her own guilt. She is faced with the decision to either accept the loss and move forwards or remain stuck 'in-between'. Through symbolic visuals and emotional storytelling, the film explores the lasting impact of grief and the existence of guilt when seeking closure.
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From Johnny Zhao
A young man delivers a goldfish to a Japanese woman searching for her estranged father in Sydney, leading to an unexpected journey that challenges her sense of identity, family, and the passage of time.
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From William Genat
A Fashion Designer and his Photographer embark on a trek into the vast Australian Outback to shoot their latest high-brow clothing campaign.
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From Ollie Ivin-Poole
After a tragic accident, two young lovers search for one another as they drift through a dreamlike space, reminiscing the joy and heartbreak of their time together as they attempt to find closure.
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From Benjamin McLeod
On his 18th birthday, Jesse cocoons himself inside his coastal family home, reminiscing about bittersweet childhood memories with his siblings. But as his older sister and brother vanish from sight, Jesse struggles to find his wings and fly away from a place so haunted by memory.
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From Justine Vlachoulis
The unexpected arrival of her older cousin, viscerally triggers young Mary with splinters of fractured memory, that threaten to tear through the fabric of her family and herself.
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From Ethan Good
Wally wins a prize on a talkback radio show he never signed up for. When the traffic light he's waiting at never turns green, it becomes unclear if he's really won anything at all.
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From Vache Kechichian
A black market photographer is hired by a journalist to photograph the victims of a mysterious serial killer.
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From Danni Fenech
Entering the world of WAGs (Wives & Girlfriends) for the first time, Madison finds herself in a space where image is everything and little goes unspoken. Over the course of a single day, she follows her boyfriend through the rhythms of his soccer life, observing from the edges as she tries to find her place. But as the line between support and self-erasure begins to blur, Madison is forced to confront what it means to belong in a world built on appearances.
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From Alastair Bruce
In Western Australia's Wheatbelt, farmers are losing something they can't replace: water. The winter rains are dropping off, the seasons are shifting, and the crops that whole communities depend on are getting harder and harder to grow. Where the Rain Goes follows the farmers, knowledge brokers and scientists chasing a way to make every drop count - a biodegradable spray, grown from bacteria, that stops rain from evaporating and steers it straight to the seed. But can this idea scale up to millions of hectares of farmland?
Best Directing
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From Jefferson Geronimo
In the quiet corners of a bathroom, a young man sits into the familiar comfort of mindless scrolling. As minutes blur into an endless stream of content, the outside world slowly fades into the background. Drawn deeper into the glow of his screen, he becomes increasingly detached from his surroundings, losing his sense of time, presence, and reality.
A dialogue-free psychological experimental short exploring digital dependency, isolation, and the fragile boundary between connection and escape.
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From Charli Waite
Dreams Deferred follows Mary, a young aspiring actress as she grapples with the ever-present tension between artistic passion and the harsh realities of the film industry. In a career where success and external validation can often feel like a reflection of personal value, Mary shares her personal experience as an actress; her passion, love for character work and struggles with feedback and self image. The documentary captures the intensity of the actor’s journey through re-enactments of auditions, stylized interviews, and dreamlike sequences inspired by classic Hollywood.
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From Dari Justin
When 12-year-old Kai is forced to recognise that his older brother has outgrown their childhood fantasy games, he decides it’s time to grow up - but is he ready?
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From Sam Davison
Jimmy is a confident, seasoned robber who breaks into a wealthy home expecting an easy job. Instead, he finds a family already tied up by another criminal. As the situation unravels, Jimmy is forced into an uneasy confrontation that tests his nerve, his morals, and what kind of criminal he actually wants to be, turning a simple robbery into something far more complicated.
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From Soumil Aggarwal
A clumsy young man who on his way to a date encounters every obstacle imaginable, and everything that could go wrong, does go wrong.
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From Mitchell Netes
At her grandfathers funeral, Jordan has a shocking realization during her father’s eulogy speech and decides to confront him.
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From Andrew Nguyen
A teenage boy scours the internet to find answers about a mysterious phenomenon after experiencing the disturbing and unsettling symptoms it describes. As he searches for answers and as the symptoms worsen, he stumbles across a fragmented digital trail left by another afflicted individual which suggests that he is not alone.
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From Milla Nikolova
A group of young drag kings prepare for their next performance, share what drag means to them and build community along the way.
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From Connor Stuchbery
Mira and her best friends Ezra, Shaun and Elena take their well-earned summer break after a long term of university work. But one day, Mira changes. She distances herself and comes back a shadow of her former vibrant and friendly self. While Shaun and Elena believe that it’s because she needs space, Ezra knows that something has changed and that the Mira he knows wouldn’t do this.
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From Stella Hely
After experiencing a sexual assault, a young teenage girl struggles with P.T.S.D and ostracism, facing the backlash of negative social attitudes and psychological trauma.
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From Rupert Mclorinan
In the midst of The Great Emu War and post depression in rural Australia, two contrasting yet equally half-witted farmers, John and Rob, face head to head with one of the dangerous beasts. Against the guidance of indifferent Army officials, the farmers deal with the situation themselves.
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From Lily Atkinson
Mia dreams of being a dancer just like her mother, but when she realises she is no longer the centre of her mother's world she gives in to her destructive impulses. It takes Mia's grandmother to give her a fresh perspective and perhaps a second chance to make her dreams come true.
Best Documentary
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From Sophie Guthrie
Anne Marie Westby along with other members of Point Lookout Surf Club on North Stradbroke Island share their experiences and recount stories of their time volunteering as surf life savers. North Stradbroke Island is a vacation destination for many, however there are many dangers. This documentary highlights the realities of the incidents that happen along with the family culture the lifesavers have created together.
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From Gabriel Cochrane
A man reflects on a childhood shaped by abuse, fear, and instability, and the small acts of kindness that helped change the course of his life. As he navigates the lasting effects of generational trauma and embraces his role as a father, he is confronted with a difficult question: can he create a different future for his family and truly break the cycle of abuse?
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From Brenanah Mitchell
Dive into the coral wonderland of Hervey Bay’s 6,500-year-old reefs stretching along the foreshore. The film follows the inspirational story of Jasper, a passionate young citizen whose deep connection to the coral reefs strengthens his bond with his late father.
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From Magenta Stafford
A brief snippet into the astounding life of American-Australian man, Denis Chandler. From his family life and upbringing, to the hardships of the AIDs epidemic in New York, Denis shares the intimate story that is his life.
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From Catie Froelicher
Blending authentic locations, and intimate interviews, 'Generations in Uniform' documents the raw, lived experiences of volunteers across multiple generations in Victoria's emergency services. Designed to inspire young people to value and pursue community service, the film foregrounds the emotional reward, accessibility and human impact of lifesaving, firefighting and emergency response work, attesting is both possible and powerful at any age.
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From Patrick Prior
A short documentary exploring the development of sporting facilities on the Adelaide Park Lands and what that means for the public.
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From Jodhi Ramsden-Mavric
The internal symphony of the female brain navigating a night out - where Joy and fear exist side by side. ‘Text Me When U Get Home’ invites the viewer into the intricate, unspoken rituals of a night out through the perspective of Sarah. As they prepare, both physically and mentally, their inner dialogue weaves through every step. The careful selection of an outfit, the quiet calculations of safety, the anxious undercurrent of the journey to the bar. Central to the story is the fleeting moment of euphoria on the dance floor. Then comes the stomach-drop of the trip home, each footstep heavy with unease, until the final exhale of relief upon arrival. Sarah’s underscoring interview functions as a lens that reveals the broader, lived reality of countless people, balancing their personal experience with a wider societal truth.
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From Lucy Gallen
After four decades of food, culture and support, Dr Nouria Salehi reflects on the closing of the Afghan Gallery Restaurant and the community it will leave behind. This documentary reveals the legacy of Australia’s first Afghan restaurant and the powerful significance it has had on the Afghan community in Australia.
Best Editing
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From Joshua Squires
A struggling politician makes a bargain for political power, only to watch his ambition manifest as a monstrous double that exposes how easily democracy, love, and identity can be corrupted by the hunger to win at any cost.
A dialogue-free psychological experimental short exploring digital dependency, isolation, and the fragile boundary between connection and escape.
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From Jaydon Sciré Giesekam
In a near-future Australia ravaged by climate collapse and corporate power, a grieving agriculturalist seeks to save his dying son with the help of an AI built from his late wife’s memories — only to uncover the perilous boundaries between love, lies, and control.
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From Ayden Trinder
As a man stumbles through a day filled with bizarre, unseen attacks, he pieces together that his vengeful ex is wielding a voodoo doll against him.
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From Rose and Poppy Gallimore
As a teenage girl travels across Sydney Harbour at night, memories from childhood begin to resurface through reflections, fragments, and fleeting moments. Blending live action with mixed-media elements, Houses in My Heart explores nostalgia, identity, and the bittersweet experience of growing up. Through dreamlike visuals and layered sound, the film reflects on the places, people, and memories that continue to shape who we become.
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From Leo Pan
Two lovers find themselves bound together by fate through a red string, exploring their relationship through high school to adulthood.
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From Sal Mak
A young woman meets an unexplainable predicament of drawing blank Mahjong tiles, launching her into a surreal, alternate world that leaves more questions than answers.
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From Derek Yang
When a Young Victorian Era girl find herself in an arranged marriage to a cunning Patriarch, she must escape from his abusive tendancies as she slowly unravels his vampiric nature. But can her dancing free her from the same bloody fates of her predecessors wives? Witness an epic surrealist odyssey of reincarnation. Experience the cyclical nature of subordination lasting through generations.
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From Lexie Rough
Jack is struggling for creative ideas and needs to submit an artwork for an upcoming deadline. A vision of takes over his mind and Jack grows to become deeply emotionally and artistically entangled with it.
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From Sattine Wilson
Sophie must face her family’s expectations when a red packet stirs old tensions, revealing the weight of tradition.
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From Morgan Cross
Shh... Listen as we explore the softly spoken genre in this quiet and unique documentary. Exploring how ASMR helps support those suffering from anxiety and insomnia all over the world. While diving into the restless side of this community with ASMR Jade and Dido ASMR. From parasocial relationships, cyber stalking, to the sexualized misconception of ASMR. Curl up and listen to the creators who help us to sleep, while confronting the challenges that keep them awake.
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From Adam Venckus
Alex goes on a winter camping trip with his girlfriend to rekindle their spark before the fire burns out, while grappling with the destructive rise of past emotional conflict.