Category: 2025 ARFF BERLIN

(Envision Award Winner)

Original Film Title: ImmiGreat

Director’s Name: Brandon Cole Widener

Writer’s Name: Brandon Cole Widener

Producer: Amanda Cruz Gonzales

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: Mexico, United States

Language: English

Runtime: 55 minutes

Film Description:

ImmiGreat is the extraordinary true story of Victor Galvan, an undocumented immigrant who risked everything to rewrite his future. At just thirteen, Victor pushed his family across the Rio Grande on makeshift rafts, fleeing crippling poverty and hunger in Mexico.

After a few near-death experiences, run-ins with Mexican gangsters, and brush-ups with border patrol, he’s smuggled across the country in the back of a van—eventually landing in Florida, where he picks oranges to help his family pay rent.

Today, Victor is a multimillionaire entrepreneur committed to giving back—building homes for struggling families in the communities he once came from. Woven throughout the film are the hard-earned lessons and insights he shares with unflinching honesty, offering a roadmap to purpose, resilience, and possibility.

(Honorable Mention)

Original Film Title: FROM THAT SMALL ISLAND

Director’s Name: Rachael Moriarty, Peter Murphy

Writer’s Name: Briona Nic Dhiarmada

Producer: Briona Nic Dhiarmada

Country of Origin: Ireland

Country of Filming: Ireland

Language: English

Runtime: 1 hour 39 minutes

Film Description:

(Finalist)

Original Film Title: Mental Wealth

Director’s Name: Michelle Stone

Writer’s Name: Michelle Stone

Producer: Lyndal Davies

Country of Origin: Australia

Country of Filming: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland

Language: English

Runtime: 47 minutes 25 seconds

Film Description:

Youth mental health is in genuine crisis. 2-3 youth in every class room are thinking of suicide. One youth will try to take their life. There has recently been a 50 per cent increase in recorded cases of youth mental illness.

Governments are slow to respond to the epidemic. The social and economic repercussions are enormous and will re-shape our society. As these ‘emerging adults’ suffer, their parents fight for their survival.

In this feature documentary, we take an intimate view of the lived experience for global youth and their parents, through the lens of a famous Australian mental health expert and father, Australian of the Year Professor Pat McGorry AO, of the Orygen Institute.

Too often, a parent takes their suicidal teen to the local hospital emergency department and waits for hours for help that never comes. They realise there are no medical staff available to treat their child. There are no resources to access and no-one to talk to. The parent wants to save their child but retreats home, without support, abandoned by a medical system that is overwhelmed and underfunded. In 2024, this experience is common place. Youths are hurting themselves at a record rate in Australia and across the world. Being born to wealth in western economies is no protection because mental health resources are scarce and funding pressures are growing everywhere.

We enter Pat McGorry’s world and exclusively document his past experience as a father in a system in severe strain. We also hear from other parents of youth who’ve survived a mental health crisis – and from those whom have lost a child. And we feel hopeful, as we hear directly from today’s youth – about a revolution taking place across the globe. They are mobilizing to bring change in the way governments, health and education systems, parents and the general public respond to youth mental health.

(Finalist)

Original Film Title: Intoxicated

Director’s Name: Karl André Talbot

Writer’s Name: Karl André Talbot

Producer: Derek Guillory

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 38 minutes 26 seconds

Film Description:

Intoxicated is the sequel to the movie Silenced: As Mercury Rises, delving deeper into the illnesses caused by heavy metals. Dr. Derek Guillory leads the story, focusing on a three-year-old patient precariously battling cancer, teetering on the edge of survival.

(Honorable Mention)

Original Film Title: Lady Jasmine

Director’s Name: Hanzi Zhao

Writer’s Name: Hanzi Zhao

Producer: Hanzi Zhao

Country of Origin: China

Country of Filming: China

Language: Chinese

Runtime: 20 minutes 55 seconds

Film Description:

At thirty-five, divorced and residing in her mother’s home, the daughter endured daily contempt—until a sex scandal engulfed the mother, forcing the daughter to learn the unknown side of her mother.

(Winner)

Original Film Title: THE GENERATIONS OF MEDIA – Music is Dead ?

Director’s Name: Peter Eipeldauer, Robert Huber

Writer’s Name: Peter Eipeldauer, Robert Huber

Producer: Peter Eipeldauer, Robert Huber

Country of Origin: Austria

Country of Filming: United States, Austria, Belgium, Greece, Netherlands, United Kingdom

Language: English, German, Greek (Modern)

Runtime: 2 hours 44 minutes 5 seconds

Film Description:

THE GENERATIONS OF MEDIA – Music is Dead ?

“Boomer Generation” against “Gen Z”

The brand new international music and media documentary film project produced for festivals and cinemas against streaming and global heating, with the second undertitle:
“Music Is Dead?”

(Honorable Mention)

Original Film Title: Home, Sweet Home

Director’s Name: Tianyi Chen

Writer’s Name: Tianyi Chen

Producer: Jinsong Zhu

Country of Origin: China

Country of Filming: China

Language: Chinese

Runtime: 1 hour 55 minutes

Film Description:

The used car dealer met a girl who changed the destinies of himself, his mother, and the girl herself.