Festival Awards

We are excited to award a film that reflects the best of the spirit of the competition as a whole in its personal search of how memories and historical conditions forge the complexities of our contemporary realities, and how we make sense of them. Genuine in its playfulness and truly independent in spirit, the film highlights the importance of art in a world that’s more and more painted in black and white, avoiding simplification when introducing us to a place, conflict and historical context.
Two friends invite us on their filmmaking journey, sharing their process very openly and with a lot of humor. Following them into the jungle and on their desktop explorations, we learn a lot about Papua, a land between golden mountains and instant noodles.
Hinting at the complexities of the postcolonial heritage through concrete images of the politics of exploitation reflected in nature, alongside the historic legacy of archival images connecting personal memories and political utopia, while also questioning the process of filmmaking itself, the film struck us as a very generous work. It offers a tender and pacifist approach to post colonialism, military conflict and exploitation, told from the very honest and charming point of view of a friendship.
The Vienna Short Film Award goes to: Golden Island by Arief Budiman 

From the movements and play of children on the beach to the rhythms of birth songs. We see exposures of time. We see time being exposed. Layers are intertwined and form a polyphonic image of the wounds and scars of colonization, as well as individual and collective experiences in the waters off the Colombian Pacific coast. With an impressive experimental visual approach, the film transcends conventional visual language and creates a trance-like flow of mental and physically tangible images, in which layers of time and counter-images flash into view. The award for Best Cinematography goes to Mauricio Reyes for his work on Pacífico by Daniel Duque.

Through its ethereal atmosphere and haunting cinematography, the film conveys a profound sentiment of loss. Moving between anonymous interiors, familiar yet estranged landscapes, and remote horizons, it shapes a fragmented experience of space, evoking a sense of frozen temporality and giving visual form to the ache of separation from a homeland.
For its delicate cinematic language and its evocative exploration of memory and exile, the Special Mention goes to TRACE by Alexandra Pavlovskaya-Lokchine. 

We live in a moment where being truly avant-garde may mean returning to
fundamental theory: to the physics of now. For its rigorous and lyrical return to the fundamentals of cinema: light, time, space and celluloid, this film transforms experimentation into a hypnotic choreography and meditation on perception itself. Painting with light and perfectly complemented by sound, it stretches the instant into movement: an expanded reality, that is briefly and luminously ruptured by the appearance of the filmmaker, turning the film back onto itself and into a reflection on cinema’s own conditions.
It is the jury’s great honour to present the ASIFA Austria Award for Best Film to toward a fundamental theory of physics by Victor Van Rossem. 

This film is at once funny and brutal, a sharp commentary on our gamified present. Drawing on the visual grammar and behavioral loops of everyday digital life, the film playfully exposes how the internet has structured perception, desire and: attention itself. With wit and precision, it turns the quest for a burger into an observation of the mechanics of endless optimization, that feels both absurd and strangely familiar. For its humour, and for shattering the screen wide open, it is the jury’s honour to present the Jury Prize for Outstanding Artistic Achievement to Not Satisfied, Redo by Shui Yuan (Water)

This film is an existentialist journey through archetypal dreams, intertwined realities and a Faustian quest for knowing it all. It is so precisely constructed in its storytelling that it exerts a constant pull, drawing us deeper and deeper into its layered narratives, much like its characters who are driven by their relentless desires. Reality and imagination, the familiar and the uncanny brilliantly blur into one another, creating multi-level possibilities for interpretation. The jury felt the necessity to honor this film. It is our pleasure to offer the Honorable Mention for Special Artistic Achievement to Dieu est timide (God is shy) by Jocelyn Charles

The award goes to a film that tells an intense story about individuals and about a community. Its storytelling places us simultaneously in a state of emancipation and a state of fear. Its anarchic feminist streak delivers a powerful political statement while never losing interest in the personal traits of the main characters. The Austrian Short Film Award for Best Film goes to: Unleaded 95 by Emma Hütt and Tina Emy Muffler.

This film is a tenderly constellated wake up call to each and every one of us, walking a fine line between cascading pixilated abstraction and overwhelming hard facts. A quiet authorial narration gently shifts from her fearful childhood encounter with water, learning how, ​“the water knows your weight,” and, ​“the mechanisms that keep me from drowning are fragile,” before pivoting to universally devastating statistics of melting and calving glaciers. The narration assumes the voice of the water that interconnects all endangered being on our planet: The Jury Prize for Best Newcomer goes to this, too, will be liquid by Karolina Malwina Gruschka. 

The Honorable Mention goes to a film that tells a seemingly simple story of how good intentions can spark misunderstanding, as the main character’s desire to do the right thing ultimately puts both his job and integrity at risk. Beneath its understated narrative, the film reveals remarkable emotional depth and layered storytelling, creating a work that is both tender and emotional. The Honorable Mention goes to: Found&Lost by Reza Rasouli.

This video felt like a real slap in our faces – but in a good way. It stood out because of its disruptive, humorous but intense energy. We were amazed by its well developed storyline, production value and its important message about empowering female and queer and bipoc identities. The winner of this year’s Austrian Music Video Award is: BUBBLEGUM – DACID GO8LIN by Fjodor Carl Kelling and Ioan Gavriel.

We really appreciate this video for pulling us into its flow of time. The depiction of queer love and its production really stuck with us. It made us want to see more. The honorable mention goes to: INSIDE – AYGYUL by Sabrina Norte.

The protagonist of the award-winning film always tries to do the right thing — and yet he fails because he does not adhere to the rules. Tamim is a Syrian father who lives in Vienna with his wife and daughter. He works nights as a toilet attendant in a Viennese nightclub and only returns home in the early morning. When the electricity in the stairwell of his residential building goes out, he replaces the fuse himself — not without being reprimanded by an Austrian neighbour. When a visitor of the nightclub forgets his wallet in the restroom, Tamim wants to return it personally, only to be accused of stealing it in the first place. Initiative is penalised, and in the end the protagonist seems to give up.

A grippingly performed story about migration, integration, precarious labou and unspoken rules of social coexistence, as well as the search for recognition and acceptance in a (new) society. Not only the story and performances, but also the cinematography, editing and music convinced the jury to a particularly high degree.

The Social Responsibility Award of the Chamber of Labour Vienna goes to Found&Lost by Reza Rasouli.

A multilayered film with a complex challenge in its soundtrack. Both the audio layer and the screenplay are sensitively and delicately executed on a technical level — recorded, edited, designed, and mixed with great care. The sound design and the music bring the story to the emotional level of our main character in a deeply empathetic way for the audience. Emotional, dynamic, tragic, compassionate, multifaceted, and profoundly moving.
The Award for Best Sound Design goes to: Ramin Abusedgh, sound designer of Found&Lost by Reza Rasouli

We selected a film whose subject matter truly resonated with us as young people. Without this film, we would probably never have engaged with the protagonist. The director presents a topic that initially seemed rather ordinary to us in a humorous way, capturing our attention within the first few minutes. Alongside its rich and varied cinematography, the film guides us through a building using voice-over narration. We found an astonishingly calm activism in the film, accompanied by eerie electronic sounds. The film sharpened our awareness of sustainability and political decision-making, while entertaining us at the same time: for example through its dynamic execution, lively lighting, zooms, and editing. Our Youth Jury Award goes to: All Buildings Are Beautiful by Christoph Schwarz.

We would like to give a special mention to Out of Sync by Adam Baroud for its realistic portrayal, its storyline, and especially the outstanding acting performance by Zita Geier.