Category: 2025 WSXA Paris

(ENVISION AWARD WINNERS)

Original Film Title: Too late?

Director’s Name: Jacek Jędrzejczak

Writer’s Name: Jacek Jędrzejczak

Producer: Jacek Jędrzejczak

Country of Origin: Poland

Country of Filming: Poland

Language: English

Runtime: 8 minutes 43 seconds

Film Description:

Littering in forests poses a serious threat to the natural environment. Waste and garbage in the forest not only harm nature, but may also have a negative impact on animals, plants and water quality.
Waste, especially plastic-related waste, can remain in the forest for a very long time, contributing to its degradation. Plastic decomposes very slowly and its presence can lead to soil and groundwater contamination.
What to do to prevent littering of forests before it is too late?

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: “Mask, October 31, 2024”

Director’s Name: JANET KUSMIERSKI

Writer’s Name: JANET KUSMIERSKI

Producer: JANET KUSMIERSKI

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 11 minutes 54 seconds

Film Description:

“Mask” premiered at the Hauser & Wirth Amphitheater, NYC, October 31, 2024.
The short is inspired by Halloween and mask drawings from around the world.
The drawings consist of time-lapses and animations created in Procreate on an iPad Pro edited in Adobe Premiere. The running time is 11:54 minutes. Musical score is by Calder K. Singer.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Great Journey

Director’s Name: Jürgen Baums

Writer’s Name: Jürgen Baums

Producer: Jürgen Baums

Country of Origin: Germany

Country of Filming: Germany

Language: English

Runtime: 16 minutes 4 seconds

Film Description:

A Near Death Experience.

„Near-death experience“ is a term used to describe a wide range of profound personal experiences made by people who have found themselves in a life-threatening situation.

These experiences can range from experiencing a conscious being without a physical body to encounters with deceased loved ones or beings. There is often a review of the most impressive events of one’s life.

Some of the typical elements and feelings reported in near-death experiences are tunnel, light, otherworldly and outer space experiences, feelings of love, peace, security and painlessness and, in a few cases, fear and distress.

The range of explanations accepted for this phenomenon extends from scientific to spiritual approaches. Near-death experiences are mentioned in almost all cultures of mankind, regardless of worldviews.

Mashup video by Jürgen Baums, found footage video.art,
length: 16:04 minutes, Germany, Krefeld, December 2023

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Orangerie

Director’s Name: Caleb Weintraub

Writer’s Name: Caleb Weintraub

Producer: Caleb Weintraub

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 7 minutes 54 seconds

Film Description:

This 7.5-minute experimental video unfolds within a derelict Victorian greenhouse, presenting a non-linear narrative that interweaves past, present, and future. The film combines AI-generated scenes, camera movements, sound effects, and music into a kinetic, fractured dreamscape.

The greenhouse serves as a stage hosting automatons from different eras. Humanoid figures in quasi-hazmat suits sweep the grounds with devices resembling metal detectors, while in scenes recalling a bygone era, croquet sticks appear, creating a visual parallel. These searching figures seem to be attempting to uncover the location’s enigmatic history or their own automata lineage. In other scenes, mechanical children engage in hunting sequences, pursuing robotic birds through overgrown foliage. Elsewhere, humanoid robots tend to withered plants.

Visual motifs of hunting and searching recur, creating parallels across different timeframes. Imagery shifts and transforms, suggesting themes of creation, discovery, and obsolescence in a world where past, present, and future coalesce.

The video’s atmosphere incorporates gothic undertones, nostalgia, and surrealism, with elements of the absurd and macabre. It touches on concepts of decay, memory, and the fluidity of time, as indicated by the weathered greenhouse and the automata’s anachronistic activities.

Created without traditional filming equipment, the project uses AI tools, including Runway ML (2.5), Magnific, Krea, Luma Labs: Dream Machine, Midjourney, and Eleven Labs, Suno AI. The resulting composition of fractured visuals and atmospheric soundscapes explores ideas about consciousness, the search for origins, and the cyclical nature of time in a reality where time seems to fold in on itself.

(WINNER)

Original Film Title: The Walk

Director’s Name: Miluum

Writer’s Name: Sachiko

Producer:

Country of Origin: Germany

Country of Filming: Germany

Language: French

Runtime: 3 minutes 34 seconds

Film Description:

A curious girl stumbles upon a clandestine deal where a lone traveler trades “time” to a mysterious ambassador.