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Winners of the Short Film Competitions announced

In the past few days, the International Short Film Jury, consisting of Douwe Dijkstra, Vytautas Katkus, and Anne Verbeure, viewed four curated selections of International Shorts and one dedicated to Belgian student work.
International Short Film Competition
The International Short Film Competition (powered by Nationale Loterij) once again highlighted the importance of the short film as a medium. Among the wide range of voices, the jury selected Felipe Casanova’s O Rio de Janeiro Continua Lindo (Rio Remains Beautiful) as this year’s laureate.
Set amid the revelry of Rio’s Carnival, the film hones in on Ilma, a mother writing a letter to her absent son. Through this intimate gesture, Casanova weaves together personal and collective memories of police brutality, state racism, and the lingering atrocities of colonialism, unpacking the Carnival as an emotive space of remembrance and resistance. Through a montage of newly produced fiction, documentary material, and archival footage, Casanova connects past to present in an unbroken line and exposes persistent realities of continued political struggle.
The jury praised the film for its poetic sensibility and political resonance: “This film clearly represents its place of origin, yet through its personal gaze, it becomes highly universal. The use of analog footage evokes an ambiguity of time that underlines the sad fact that some things have not yet changed for the better. State and police violence, memory, and grief are addressed through the intimate writings of its main protagonist. Her resilience sparks hope, which is also beautifully expressed in the film’s title.”
The jury also gave a Special Mention to Émilien Dubuc’s Odamado for its conceptually bold and affective inquiry into memory preservation. Blurring the lines between biotechnology, experimental photography, and moving image, Dubuc reconfigures intimate traces of memory (e.g., a family photograph, a recording of a grandmother’s song, a letter) as data encoded in DNA. By framing this scientific process within an emotional and artistic space, Odamado contemplates an urge to remember through cinema.



Competition for Belgian Student Shorts
Each year, the Competition for Belgian Student Shorts (powered by Amplo) shines a spotlight on emerging filmmaking talent from across the country. Open to students from accredited film schools in Flanders, Wallonia, and Brussels, the competition has previously awarded talents such as Anthony Nti, Kato De Boeck, Adil El Arbi & Bilall Fallah, and Lukas Dhont.
This year, the jury presented the Award for Best Belgian Student Short (powered by Amplo), worth €5,000, to Maman by Niko Wei. The poetic documentary takes the form of a letter from a son to his mother. What begins as an attempt to recount her story - from her childhood move from Likasi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Brussels to her lifelong dream of becoming a photographer - gradually transforms into something else. Built around a single, intimate voice recording of the mother reading the letter for the first time, Maman becomes a moving contemplation on memory, love, and the act of storytelling itself.
The jury praised the film, claiming to have chosen “a surprising, loving film that doesn’t reveal its protagonist until the very end. With small means, this film gives you a big space to wander and feel. Just when you think you were in a certain world the film changes and makes way for a very touching moment. Ultimately, it’s an ode to all mothers.”
The jury also awarded a Special Mention to Far From Beyrouth by Mon Dewulf. The film follows a young man in Brussels whose partner is living through war in Beirut. As he tends to his cat and empty apartment, he drifts between the comfort of distance and the unease of a conflict experienced only through messages, videos, and silence. The jury highlighted that the film “represents closeness over a long distance. It shows the intimate struggles of a long distance relationship with both a person and a city in a moment of extreme violence.”
Audience Award for Best Belgian Student Short
The Film Fest Gent audience once again had the opportunity to vote for their favourite film in the Competition for Belgian Student Shorts. Shutterspeed by Jasper De Maeseneer came out on top, winning the Audience Award for Best Belgian Student Short (powered by THE PACK), worth a post-production budget of €6,500. In Shutterspeed, an encounter between two adolescents unfolds into a quiet study of desire, exposure, exploitation, and power. Buda by Raphaël Kaddour and Housekeeper by Aaron Denolf respectively came in second and third.