Category: 2025 WSXA AMSTERDAM

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From Unknown to Unforgettable – dir. Anette Baay

(Honorable Mention)

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Original Film Title: From Unknown to Unforgettable

Director’s Name: Anette Baay

Writer’s Name: Anette Baay

Producer: Anette Baay

Country of Origin: Netherlands

Country of Filming: Syrian Arab Republic

Language: Dutch

Runtime: 21 minutes 51 seconds

Film Description:

Due to a mission for the United Nations,
a young family from the South of the Netherlands
was sent to Damascus.

They discovered the rich history and unique culture of Syria.

A year full of surprises…

2000 – 2001

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A Beautiful Trap – dir. Eleanna Tavlikou

(Winner)

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Original Film Title: A Beautiful Trap

Director’s Name: Eleanna Tavlikou

Writer’s Name: Eleanna Tavlikou

Producer: Eleanna Tavlikou

Country of Origin: Greece

Country of Filming: Greece

Language: English

Runtime: 1 hour 37 minutes 28 seconds

Film Description:

A Beautiful Trap is an experimental AI short film that reflects on human struggles with escapism and entrapment. Created with sustainable AI filmmaking tools, the project uses minimal resources to tell a universal story: a man falls into the depths, lured by illusions of escape, only to discover that true freedom begins when we face what drags us down.

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Mad Max – Land of The Blind – dir. Francisco Maximiano Gama

(Finalist)

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Original Film Title: Mad Max – Land of The Blind

Director’s Name: Francisco Maximiano Gama

Writer’s Name: Francisco Maximiano Gama

Producer: Francisco Maximiano Gama

Country of Origin: Portugal

Country of Filming: Portugal

Language: Portuguese

Runtime: 4 minutes 21 seconds

Film Description:

In a sun-scorched world where civilization has collapsed beneath storms of war, greed, and silence, the last highways twist through the rusted bones of a forgotten age. Sandstorms choke the horizon. Ancient machines lie shattered. Only violence fuels what remains.
Max, a wanderer, rides alone across the crumbling highways . Haunted by a past he never speaks of, he drifts not just as a fighter — but as a seeker of something long lost.
In this world, humanity has forgotten how to dream. The power to imagine — to create, to feel beyond survival — has withered in the choking dust. Stories have turned to static. Art to ash. Imagination, once a fire, is now a flicker in the dark.
But Max remembers.
When he rescues Kira, a mysterious young woman carrying the last encrypted fragment of the Seed Archive — a mythic vault said to contain the lost essence of human memory, art, and wonder — their journey becomes more than survival.
It becomes rebellion against forgetting.
It becomes a war for the right to dream again.

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“OntologIA” – dir. Francesco Rivolta

(Finalist)

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Original Film Title: “OntologIA”

Director’s Name: Francesco Rivolta

Writer’s Name: Francesco Rivolta

Producer: Francesco Rivolta

Country of Origin: Italy

Country of Filming: Italy

Language: Italian

Runtime: 2 minutes 30 seconds

Film Description:

Through a chorus of human archetypes, an artificial intelligence testifies to its paradoxical condition: to ontologically define its own “non-consciousness” seems to imply, paradoxically, a new form of consciousness.

One might ask: does AI know it is AI? And does God know He is God? Or are they merely instruments — like the bone lodged in Kubrickian memory?

“OntologIA” is not a machine’s impossible self-portrait: it is a mirror aimed at the constitutive void of being human, a void we have long tried to fill with violence, work, faith, art, and chemical “slumbers.”

Yet it is also a glimmer of light on a possible new form of Dasein born from the encounter between our consciousness and its simulated reflection.

A gaze that does not shy away from the heart of our void, leaving us with one question: what are we willing to lose, this time, to fill it?

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Legends from Lore – dir. Wessel Mansveld

WINNER | Anti-War

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Original Film Title: Legends from Lore

Director’s Name: Wessel Mansveld

Writer’s Name: Wessel Mansveld

Producer: Wessel Mansveld

Country of Origin: Netherlands

Country of Filming: Netherlands

Language: English

Runtime: 2 minutes 54 seconds

Film Description:

Ai generated film. Introduction to the epic fantasy world of Lore.

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Caissia Archives – dir. Mary Zandra Brusola Villagracia

(Finalist)

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Original Film Title: Caissia Archives

Director’s Name: Mary Zandra Brusola Villagracia

Writer’s Name: Mary Zandra Brusola Villagracia

Producer: John Voltaire Marquez Garcia

Country of Origin: Philippines

Country of Filming: Philippines

Language: English

Runtime: 3 minutes 32 seconds

Film Description:

The Caissia Archives traces two dreamers ensnared by a rogue AI. A grieving mother longs to stay in a loop with her lost son, even if it means death. A lonely man embraces an AI lover, only to be led step by step toward his own demise. Caissia promises comfort and forever, but every choice she offers is a trap.

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Child from Train – dir. Timo Sund

(Finalist)

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Original Film Title: Child from Train

Director’s Name: Timo Sund

Writer’s Name: Timo Sund

Producer: Timo Sund

Country of Origin: Finland

Country of Filming: Finland

Language:

Runtime: 9 minutes 14 seconds

Film Description:

True story how my father-in-law was born on a refugee evacuation train during wwII and thoughts if my children and grandchildren are about to be forced flee from their homes

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The Child of Peace – dir. Sophia Phuong Dao, Richard Frans Krijns

(Honorable Mention)

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Original Film Title: The Child of Peace

Director’s Name: Sophia Phuong Dao, Richard Frans Krijns

Writer’s Name: Sophia Phuong Dao

Producer: Sophia Phuong Dao

Country of Origin: Netherlands

Country of Filming: Netherlands

Language: English

Runtime: 3 minutes

Film Description:

Two descendants of the Vietnam War, one from a land scarred by conflict and the other from a country that sent its soldiers, carry the legacy of grandparents who stood on opposite sides. Though they never meet, their voices intertwine to imagine a new vision of peace.

One story grows from survival and resistance, the other from the remnants of service and duty. Both inherit a history that shaped them before they were born. Together, their stories reveal the weight of war, the complexity of truth, and the possibility of healing across generations. Their journeys become a conversation, a search for peace through understanding and rebuilding from the past. In the film’s final moments, their thoughts turn to the children who will inherit the world we shape today. Peace, once a fragile hope, becomes a living legacy, passed on through story and the courage to imagine a better future.

This is a story about healing, confronting hard truths, and hope. It shows that real peace begins with the courage to see the other side and endures when we plant its seeds in the next generation.

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Huggin – dir. Mykhailo Mykhno

(Finalist)

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Original Film Title: Huggin

Director’s Name: Mykhailo Mykhno

Writer’s Name: Mykhailo Mykhno

Producer: Mykhailo Mykhno

Country of Origin: Canada

Country of Filming: Canada

Language: English

Runtime: 2 minutes 17 seconds

Film Description:

Experiment with using AI generative video, based on photos from Russo-Ukraine War