Category: BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM – 2025 WSXA AMSTERDAM

(Envision Award Winner)

Original Film Title: DYNAMICS

Director’s Name: Teo Baehler

Writer’s Name: Teo Baehler

Producer: Teo Baehler, Jeroen Tapper, Jeroen Dirrix

Country of Origin: Netherlands

Country of Filming: Netherlands

Language: English

Runtime: 14 minutes

Film Description:

DYNAMICS (Frozen Movements) is an experimental, dreamy and surreal stop-motion film, created using everyday materials. The film offers a visual reflection on transformations that emerge through the intuitive blending of dissimilar elements. The result is a non-narrative art film where fantasy, form and texture merge into a sensory experience.
This short animation invites viewers to surrender to a world where logic gives way to atmosphere and intuition. The hypnotic soundscape enhances the avant-garde character of the film and leaves plenty of room for personal interpretation.

(Finalist)

Original Film Title: Your Imagination, Your Adventure

Director’s Name: Dinda Prasetyo

Writer’s Name: Dinda Prasetyo

Producer: Dinda Prasetyo

Country of Origin:

Country of Filming:

Language: English

Runtime: 1 minute

Film Description:

A lone cyclist rides through a forest at dawn. As he pedals forward, reality shifts, morphing into surreal landscapes: ancient battles, alien worlds, frozen tundras, and underwater realms. Without dialogue or plot, the journey unfolds as a dreamlike exploration of perception and imagination. The bicycle becomes a vessel for transcendence, moving seamlessly across time and space. In the end, he emerges into a modern city street, water splashing behind him as the screen reveals: “Your Imagination. Your Adventure.” It is an experience, an experimental exploration of perception, technology, and the boundless nature of the human imagination.

(Finalist)

Original Film Title: Airports in the 90’s

Director’s Name: Laura Morell

Writer’s Name: Laura Morell

Producer: Laura Morell

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 24 minutes 51 seconds

Film Description:

“Airports in the 90’s” is a collage film composed entirely of scenes from over 100 Hollywood films set in airports or airplanes during the 1990s. Blending moments of tension, intimacy, absurdity, and quiet routine, the film constructs a single, fictional day at an unnamed airport—an ephemeral space where strangers intersect, journeys begin, and stories are suspended mid-air.

In the spirit of Christian Marclay’s “The Clock” and Guy Maddin’s “The Green Fog”, this film operates in the realm of archival remix and cinematic reconstruction. “Airports in the 90’s” invites viewers to reflect on the cinematic language of a pre-9/11 era of travel, where every terminal was a stage and every departure gate a site of drama.

(Winner)

Original Film Title: Empathy

Director’s Name: Steffi Alte

Writer’s Name: Steffi Alte

Producer: Steffi Alte

Country of Origin: Austria

Country of Filming: Austria

Language: German

Runtime: 27 minutes 33 seconds

Film Description:

Empathy

(Honorable Mention)

Original Film Title: The Last President

Director’s Name: Bin He

Writer’s Name: Bin He

Producer: Bin He, Xuetao Hu, Xiaoyu Li

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 15 minutes

Film Description:

In 2048, a fallen world leader is imprisoned after resisting a global AI regime. Alone in a sterile future prison, he embarks on a metaphysical journey, unlocking past lives, forgotten truths, and his hidden divine destiny. As reality begins to collapse under the weight of artificial evolution, he awakens to a higher consciousness—becoming humanity’s final hope for transcendence.

(Finalist)

Original Film Title: VOID.exe

Director’s Name: Kostiantyn Mishchenko

Writer’s Name: Kostiantyn Mishchenko

Producer: Kostiantyn Mishchenko

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 10 minutes

Film Description:

VOID.EXE is an anti-film, a meditative experience built upon the complete absence of visuals, sound, and time. It unfolds 600 seconds of black screen and silence, allowing the viewer’s consciousness to become the true screen. The film transforms expectation into introspection, where the absence becomes presence.