Category: Best Student Film – 2026 ARFF Barcelona

(AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER)

Original Film Title: Summer Is Ending

Director’s Name: WENBO WANG

Writer’s Name: WENBO WANG

Producer: Yuan Zhang

Country of Origin: China

Country of Filming: China

Language: Chinese

Runtime: 28 minutes 1 second

Film Description:

Xiaoyang, a student studying in a big city, went back to his hometown with his father to visit his grandfather. Unaccustomed to the hometown’s environment and his grandfather’s lifestyle, he secretly dumped the home-cooked rural meals he couldn’t stomach. His father punished him by making him stay in the hometown for three days to help his grandfather with farm work. Xiaoyang was unwilling and angry with his grandfather. His grandfather picked his favorite wild fruits to cheer him up, but Xiaoyang didn’t care. Three days later, on a rainy day, his father came to pick him up. His grandfather packed wild fruits to see him off, but Xiaoyang got in the car without looking back. He saw his grandfather seeing him off in the rain through the rearview mirror and wanted to say goodbye, but missed the chance as the car turned a corner. A week later, his grandfather suddenly suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, leading to brain death. He was sent home for final conservative treatment, and when Xiaoyang saw him again, his grandfather could no longer speak. The family used various medicines to sustain the grandfather’s life, but Xiaoyang hoped his grandfather could spend the last journey of his life happily.

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: I ONLY like you

Director’s Name: Camille LANDRAUD

Writer’s Name: Camille LANDRAUD

Producer: Camille LANDRAUD, Camille LUX

Country of Origin: France

Country of Filming: France

Language: English

Runtime: 14 minutes 55 seconds

Film Description:

She crosses her ex at her new work after moving back in with her sick father. But Margaret is not out and she gets conflicted by going back to her or hiding the truth.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Count Down

Director’s Name: Zongrui Li

Writer’s Name: Zongrui Li

Producer: Yingqi Ren, Jianan Hou

Country of Origin: China

Country of Filming: China

Language: Mandarin Chinese

Runtime: 6 minutes 39 seconds

Film Description:

A teenage boy with a lower-limb disability, often mocked by classmates and lacking warmth at home, momentarily imagines getting back at the bullies by sabotaging their bicycles after yet another humiliation. Just before it happens, he envisions a terrible crash that could result and realizes he, too, could become part of the harm. In the end, he doesn’t do it, rolling forward in his wheelchair instead, letting the wind and his imagination stand in for the freedom others enjoy so easily.

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: Some Days

Director’s Name: Yuanliang Wu

Writer’s Name: Daohan Yuan

Producer: Daohan Yuan

Country of Origin: China

Country of Filming: China

Language: Chinese

Runtime: 17 minutes 53 seconds

Film Description:

A mother moves through a single exhausting day—migrating like a bird between commuter trains, hospitals, and two households, only to find herself a stranger in every place she calls home.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: The Taste of Pork Belly

Director’s Name: Sophie SHUI

Writer’s Name: Sophie SHUI

Producer: Ching-Sung LIAO, Chi-Fang TING

Country of Origin: Taiwan

Country of Filming: Taiwan

Language: Chinese – Min Nan, Mandarin Chinese

Runtime: 15 minutes

Film Description:

The preschooler A-Mao spends his days fooling around and exploring with his little sister and his buddy A-Bao. When they are hungry, there are sweet potatoes and snails to eat, and from time to time A-Mao can also eat some of the pork belly that his mother has gotten as a “gift.” A-Mao’s childhood is free and happy.

A-Mao’s father, who came to Taiwan with the Kuomintang government, has been unsuccessful in different kinds of work. As a result, he spends his days in idleness and depression. He is often drinking, and likes to chatter and gripe. After someone reports on him, he is arrested and imprisoned. Afterwards, he is released following “mediation,” but his mental state has grown even stranger, and he is constantly afraid that he will arrested again.

Apart from earning money by washing people’s clothes, A-Mao’s mother occasionally prostitutes herself in exchange for pork to feed her family. A-Mao’s mother always puts on her floral skirt every time she goes to buy meat. After picking out a piece of pork belly at the meat stall, she enters the butcher’s truck to complete the “transaction.”

One day, after A-Mao notices the butcher’s truck shaking, sees a neighbor jeer at his mother, and hears his parents quarreling… A-Mao suddenly understands where the pork belly comes from. He starts to detest his mother’s floral skirt, and begins refusing to eat the pork belly that he once liked so much.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Davao Smiles

Director’s Name: Paul S. Rose, Sujin Kim

Writer’s Name: Paul S. Rose, Sujin Kim

Producer: Paul S. Rose, Minju Kim, Hyungyoo Chun

Country of Origin: South Korea

Country of Filming: Philippines

Language: English, Korean

Runtime: 19 minutes 25 seconds

Film Description:

Davao Smiles is a student-produced documentary from the University of Utah Asia Campus that follows a humanitarian dental project in Davao City, Philippines. Created by students in Professor Emeritus Paul Rose’s Documentary Production course, the film captures the collaboration between Korean and Filipino dental teams who provided free dental care to underserved communities in November 2024. With a focus on children’s oral health and international cooperation, Davao Smiles is a powerful story of service, storytelling, and global connection.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Homes for Hornbills

Director’s Name: Yanin Tangkaravakoon

Writer’s Name: Yanin Tangkaravakoon, Yupa Petcharit Rattanajan

Producer: Pennapa Tangkaravakoon

Country of Origin: Thailand

Country of Filming: Thailand

Language: English

Runtime: 12 minutes

Film Description:

Homes for Hornbills is a 12-minute documentary that follows 15-year-old Yanin Tangkaravakoon as she transforms childhood craft into conservation. Hornbills, known as “farmers of the forest”, are vital in dispersing seeds and regenerating ecosystems. Due to deforestation, Thailand’s forests are vanishing, and hornbills are losing the ancient trees they depend on to nest. When Yanin first hears a hornbill’s call, it becomes a call to action. With access to her family’s polymer lab and support from Thailand’s Hornbill Research Foundation, she helps develop a new artificial nest, which was then installed on Yao Noi Island, where nesting is in crisis. Narrated by Yanin herself, this film captures the challenges of conservation work: not every nest is used, and progress isn’t instant. But what emerges is a moving portrait of patience, ingenuity, and hope. At its heart, Homes for Hornbills is a story of a young girl bridging science and storytelling to give endangered hornbills a second chance, and of a community quietly proving that resilience can take root and soar even in a disappearing forest.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Give Me One Second

Director’s Name: Ricardo Serrano

Writer’s Name: Ricardo Serrano

Producer: Ricardo Serrano

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: No Dialogue

Runtime: 1 minute

Film Description:

On a quiet shoreline, a woman’s evening calm is interrupted by the insistent call of her phone. In a fleeting pause between connection and silence, she makes a choice that could change everything.

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: Going Down

Director’s Name: Jordan Marder

Writer’s Name: Taya Tambiev

Producer: Jordan Marder

Country of Origin: Netherlands

Country of Filming: Netherlands

Language: English

Runtime: 9 minutes 11 seconds

Film Description:

Victor takes an elevator down to the ground floor. As he meets Maria an unrecognised patient of his, exposes him and confronted with the truth and lies he holds inside of his past. As with each floor the memories real it testing his survival of if he’ll reach the ground floor.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: The Mudlarks

Director’s Name: Jamie-Lee Carrington

Writer’s Name: Jamie-Lee Carrington

Producer: Jamie-Lee Carrington

Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Country of Filming: United Kingdom

Language: English

Runtime: 5 minutes

Film Description:

Set against the shifting tides of the River Thames, this five-minute documentary follows three London mudlarkers from different walks of life. Jason, an architect with years of experience, shares his deep connection to the river’s hidden history. Anne, a social worker, finds joy and companionship in the foreshore alongside her husband. And Oona, a young student, recalls her first find, a beetle, and reflects on how mudlarking helped her navigate grief after losing her mother. Together, their stories reveal how the act of searching in the mud becomes something much deeper: a way to connect, heal, and find meaning in the fragments of the past.