An emigrant musician can’t recall the stories of his birthplace. A mother keeps the restaurant open, hoping her son returns. A cowboy wonders what’ll become of his cows. A widow cares for a chapel no one visits. And the oldest woman remembers everything—especially that—Estantegas. Under the burning sun, a strange figure roams the empty landscape of Portugal’s Minho with a boom pole, meeting the remaining inhabitants and capturing their memories on a sound recorder. An ethnographic ghost document
Nominee
Foxing: Kitsuné-tsuki
Shinano is a character designer drifting through a monotonous routine.
Her work is absorbed into a commercially driven system, and on social media, she fails to find a sense of belonging, deepening her loneliness.
One day, Koyami—a fox-masked character born from her old doodles—appears. Soon, other discarded characters emerge, blurring the boundary between Shinano’s creative world and reality.
After wandering through a labyrinth of her own mind, Shinano realizes that Koyami and the others
A Bigger Place (Un Lugar Más Grande)
Chiapas, southeastern Mexico. When the people of Tila and other villages run the town hall out of their territory, they face the challenge of exercising self-governance. “A Bigger Place” explores the day-to-day construction of autonomy, revealing a broad interweaving of people, generations, spirits and landscapes. It plunges us into the heart of a collective process, where self-governance becomes a responsibility towards oneself and others. A Zapatista-inspired adventure in Ch’ol Mayan territory
Hunting Trip
Out on a hunting trip, a father and son lie prone atop a hill. Their long wait for the perfect shot becomes a chance for the father to connect with his son and impart valuable lessons that he will need for the rest of his life.
HALVED
Set in 2006 on a fishing island in the Philippines, Maya bears the weight of her family’s survival while longing for college. Love sparks with Nilo, a fisherman, but poverty overshadows their joy. When a friend suggests seeking a foreign sponsor, Maya must choose between family, survival, and the fragile love she’s found.
Motel Grand-Pre
In Gaspésie, a remote region of Quebec, a quirky Chinese motel owner navigates his quiet routines between fixing rooms and casting lines into the sea—until his filmmaker son visits for a week. What begins as an interruption gradually unfolds into an exploration of distance, care, and the delicate ways a father and son learn to share time together.