2025 AFF Awards
New Voices Competition
Jury:
Ulrika Bandeira
Artistic Director
Doru Nițescu
Festival Director
Best film
Kabul, between prayers
Aboozar Amini / The Netherlands / 2025 / 101 minutes
A nuanced portrayal of a world that is hard to penetrate and to understand. The director approaches the story with complete openness and without moral judgement.
With beautiful cinematography, the film manages to be a sensory and sensual experience at the same time as it is deeply disturbing.
With beautiful cinematography, the film manages to be a sensory and sensual experience at the same time as it is deeply disturbing.
Best Director
To the West, in Zapata
David Bim / Cuba / 2025 / 75 minutes
Filmed in black and white, the film is constructed from long, observational shots with minimal author intervention. It serves as a window into an unknown world, where the two halves balance each other rhythmically, humanly, imaginatively, and dramaturgically.
The director’s warm and human approach creates a seamless blend of landscapes and the faces of its protagonists, making it feel as though they’re one. The characters become the world, and the world becomes the characters.
The director’s warm and human approach creates a seamless blend of landscapes and the faces of its protagonists, making it feel as though they’re one. The characters become the world, and the world becomes the characters.
Eastern European Competition
Jury:
Nedelcu Claudia Duca
Producer
Helen de Witt
Producer
Best film
My Dear Théo
Alisa Kovalenko / Ukraine, Poland and Czech Republic / 2025 / 98 minutes
A documentary about courage and personal sacrifice. Love of family and country is the motivation of the director to risk her life on the front line.
The film is a diary, a testament and a love letter from a mother to her son who want to live in a free and peacefull country.
The film is a diary, a testament and a love letter from a mother to her son who want to live in a free and peacefull country.
Romania Competition
Jury:
Ana Vlad
Documentary filmmaker
Luciano Piazza
Producer
Gabriela Iacob
Head of Scripted Content Development
Best film
Still Nia
Onet Paula / Romania / 2025 / 71 minutes
The documentary has the courage to look with honesty at trauma in a culture still learning how to deal with it. The film transforms a heavy story into a gentle, sensorial journey, creating a safe space to be immersed in, to reflect, and to heal.
Astra Film Award for the best film in the Romanian competition is offered by Voyo.
Astra Film Award for the best film in the Romanian competition is offered by Voyo.
Best Director
Bright future
Andra MacMasters / Romania / 2024 / 85 minutes
The director finds empathetic ways to reframe the past in order to challenge how we see the present, reminding us of youth as a force of resistance. The jury praises the film’s laborious and original process of re-signifying forgotten historical footage, celebrating the vision of an overlooked filmmaker. Through poetic collage and polyphony, the director turns memory into dialogue.
DocSchool
Jury:
Almási Tamás
Professor emeritus
Kryštof Burda
Producer
Best film
God's Other Plan
Moritz Mueller-Preisser / Germany / 2025 / 79 minutes
This film is a visually striking portrait of a modern family. Through the story of complex and evolving characters, the director presents a personal tale of overcoming the traditional predefined structures of living to make the best out of life and provide for their loved ones on one’s own terms. Through the creative storytelling and dramaturgical precision, this deeply entertaining observation of one particular family becomes universal in its message. In the divided world of today, it presents an excellent example of transcending those divisions through the willingness of acceptance, care and ultimately love for each other.
DocShort
Jury:
Radu Toderici
Film critic
Riho Västrik
Producer
Best film
Sixty-Seven Milliseconds
Fleury Fontaine / France / 2025 / 15 minutes
For the innovative and seamless integration of technology into the storytelling process, opening new perspectives on investigative documentary cinema narratives.
