Category: 2026 ARFF Barcelona

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Those Were the Days

Director’s Name: Ernesto Yitux

Writer’s Name: Ernesto Yitux

Producer: Ernesto Yitux

Country of Origin: Ecuador

Country of Filming: Cuba

Language: Spanish

Runtime: 17 minutes

Film Description:

In 1987, a film school was founded next to a working-class town in western Cuba. For over three decades, hundreds of film students documented the lives of its people. Qué tiempos aquellos takes us to Pueblo Textil to explore what these memories mean today, what emotions they stir, and how they transform over time. A documentary about memory as both personal and collective experience.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: The Man on the Church Spire

Director’s Name: Edwin Beeler

Writer’s Name: Edwin Beeler

Producer: Edwin Beeler, Urs Augstburger

Country of Origin: Switzerland

Country of Filming: Switzerland

Language: German, Swiss German

Runtime: 1 hour 20 minutes

Film Description:

He is the village chimney sweep, and as a roofer, he loves working on church steeples at dizzying heights. For the boy, his grandfather is a lucky charm and a strong man. He wants to emulate him and learn more about his heritage. But his grandfather’s fall from the roof changes everything, and on the filmmaker’s 31st birthday, an unimaginable suicide occurs.

What remains are open questions about intergenerational trauma, about male dominance, female subordination, about one’s own identity – and silence.