Category: Best Feature Film – 2025 ARFF Paris

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: SONGS OF ADAM

Director’s Name: Oday Rasheed

Writer’s Name: Oday Rasheed

Producer: Majed Rasheed

Country of Origin: Iraq

Country of Filming : Iraq

Language: Arabic

Runtime: 97 minutes

Film Description:

In a remote Mesopotamian village on the banks of the Euphrates River, twelve-year-old Adam decides to stop time within himself. Only three people believe in his ability to defy time: Anki, his loyal best friend; Ali, his younger brother; and Iman, his cousin, whose dreams of a future with Adam are shattered by his choice.

As the years pass, the villagers grow suspicious of Adam’s unchanging appearance. When a devastating weevil infestation strikes the crops for the second year in a row, the villagers blame Adam, believing he is cursed. He is imprisoned in an old, isolated barn, where he remains for over twelve years.

In the barn, through a magical blend of innocence and wonder, Adam remains untouched by time. However, the world around him, and those he loves, continue to age. Anki, now his jailer, transforms into the guardian of Adam’s eternal childhood. Adam draws Anki back to his childhood self, reviving the lost days of their friendship, regardless of how much time has passed.

Everyone gets old, except Adam.

Ali watches time slip away, growing increasingly disillusioned as he struggles to reconcile his aging self with the image of the forever-young Adam, while Iman, once filled with dreams of love, tangles time and space on her deathbed.

Realizing that the end of a dream follows the beginning of daylight, Adam witnesses the death of Anki, who has reached the age of eighty. Fulfilling his friend’s last wish, Adam places Anki’s body in a small fishing boat and takes it south across the Euphrates River to the sea.

Alone at the riverbank, Adam listens to the sounds of his eternal childhood, where the boundaries between dream and reality blur.

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: Persona Non Grata: Chiune Sugihara

Director’s Name: Cellin Gluck

Writer’s Name: Tetsuro Kamata, Hiromichi Matsuo

Producer: Kazutoshi Wadakura, Nobuyuki Iinuma

Country of Origin: Japan

Country of Filming : Japan

Language: Japanese

Runtime: 138 minutes

Film Description:

Story of a Japanese diplomat, Chiune Sugihara, who issued more than two thousand visas to Jewish refugees in Lithuania, saving over six thousand lives.

Original Film Title: Do Us Part

Director’s Name: Clare Preuss

Writer’s Name: Katherine Rawlinson

Producer: Sandi Somers, Michelle Thrush, Katherine Rawlinson

Country of Origin: Canada

Country of Filming : Canada

Language: English

Runtime: 1 hour 18 minutes 31 seconds

Film Description:

Do Us Part follows the Webbers, a Canadian family of eco-architects living and working under one increasingly suffocating roof. Over the course of a single day, and entirely within the walls of their shared home, the seams begin to split. At the center is Simone, the formidable matriarch haunted by her sister’s death – a trauma that resurfaces in a dream the night before it all begins to unravel. Simone believes her adult children – anxious Daniel, conflicted Geoff, and independent Sam – aren’t living the lives they were meant to. Her husband Martin, principled and nostalgic, clings to the eco-architectural ideals on which their firm, Webber Family Architecture, was founded. But the firm has grown stagnant, and it’s Simone who’s been keeping it alive – chasing clients, subsidizing projects, holding everything together, and reaping none of the rewards. Something must change.

At Sam’s 25th birthday dinner, every carefully held secret comes to light. Charlotte, Daniel’s hyper-efficient and heavily pregnant wife, reveals she’s bought them a house. Sam confesses she’s been working for Level Architecture, the family’s corporate, greenwashed rival. Simone drops the final blow: she’s joined Level as a partner, helped Sam get the job, and is selling the family home to the highest bidder, ending any dream of keeping it in the family. As accusations fly, a kitchen fire erupts and Charlotte goes into labour — forcing everyone, quite literally, out of the house. Do Us Part is a darkly funny, emotionally layered portrait of a family on the edge, and a woman daring to lead them somewhere new.

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: KAMIKAZE TIME TRAVEL

Director’s Name: KAZUMICHI OKUBO, NAOMI ITO

Writer’s Name: FUMIKO KUSAKABE

Producer: Makoto Kusakari, Daisuke Tarutani

Country of Origin: Japan

Country of Filming : Japan

Language: Japanese

Runtime: 110 minutes

Film Description:

The main character, Kotaro Sakamoto, who was a Kamikaze pilot and was scattered to the sea, is washed ashore in present-day Okinawa, transcending time and space, and meets the other main character, Masaya Nakahara. A naked young man washes ashore on the coast of Okinawa. Mr. and Mrs. Miyazato welcome him home, name him “Umi” (from the sea), and care for him. Ummi loses his memory and stays at home in place of their son “Kaito” who committed suicide. One summer day, Masaya Nakahara, a friend of Kaito’s who died at university in Tokyo, comes to offer incense.

Soon, Umi remembers that he is a past Kamikaze pilot [Kotaro Sakamoto] and decides to go to Tokyo. In Tokyo, Masaya takes Kotaro home and introduces him to his mother. And when he looked at his grandfather’s belongings, he found a postcard from Junichi Kitajima. Kitajima was a member of the suicide squadron, just like Kotaro . The next day, Masaya took Kotaro to the broadcasting station where his brother was. There, he heard a story about the Great East Japan Earthquake and was moved. He hears a speech by a political group on the street and discovers a new mission. Later, he meets with Kitajima again and talks about the war. Kotaro laughs with satisfaction and hugs Masaya, saying, “Take care of Japan. He then heads for Yasukuni Shrine, where he disappears along with the members of the Hiryu Koubutai. Finally, at the seaside, Mr. and Mrs. Miyazato stare out at the sea and mutter, “Umi has become Wadatsumi. There is a young man walking to the seaside; is it Kotaro or his son Kaito…?

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: CALL IT A DAY

Director’s Name: Liang Ba

Writer’s Name: Liang Ba

Producer: Liang Ba

Country of Origin: China

Country of Filming : China

Language: Chinese

Runtime: 110 minutes

Film Description:

Bad judgment leads to the suicide of a high school student, and the case is covered up by power, leading to another chain of cases that exposes the secret hands behind one corruption case after another. For the sake of his children he chose to fill the void of the law with revenge in his own way.

(WINNER)

Original Film Title: The Spiritualization of Jeff Boyd

Director’s Name: Uwe Schwarzwalder

Writer’s Name: Uwe Schwarzwalder

Producer: Uwe Schwarzwalder, Chris Hirschhäuser, Queeny King, Zornitsa Petkova, Suraj Tiwari, Hanu Roj, Kapil Siddharth

Country of Origin: Switzerland

Country of Filming : Switzerland

Language:

Runtime: 102 Minutes

Film Description:

The notorious Jeff Boyd goes on the run from a mental institution to start over, but it takes him on a search for love and spiritual meaning.