Category: STAFF PICKS – 2026 ARFF Barcelona

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: Virtualidade

Director’s Name: Marta Torres

Writer’s Name: Marta Torres

Producer: Marta Torres

Country of Origin: Brazil

Country of Filming: Brazil

Language: English, Portuguese

Runtime: 8 minutes 35 seconds

Film Description:

In the age of artificial intelligence, two characters start a conversation through the “Socialverse” and face their doubts about their perceptions of what is real in the virtual world and what is illusion in reality. A tribute to the history of cinema combined with the issues brought by the new technologies.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Cometa 1600

Director’s Name: Alejandra Díaz Olvera

Writer’s Name: Alejandra Díaz Olvera

Producer: Alejandra Díaz Olvera, Norma Alicia Olvera Herber

Country of Origin: Mexico

Country of Filming: Mexico

Language: Spanish

Runtime: 2 hours 18 minutes 30 seconds

Film Description:

In 2026, fugitive journalist Emilio Borges tells the story of Cometa 1600, a group of scientists dedicated to studying the consequences of environmental degradation on our mental health and who were forcibly disappeared due to their environmental activism. Through a device called the Kaleidoscopic Camera, they discovered that human dreams depend on Monarch butterfly migrations, which are threatened by ecological damage. These scientists have solutions and Emilio is the only one who can share them.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Where the gold tops grow

Director’s Name: Tracey Chouvin

Writer’s Name: Tracey Chouvin

Producer: Tracey Chouvin

Country of Origin: Australia

Country of Filming: Australia

Language: English

Runtime: 9 minutes 33 seconds

Film Description:

Aussi Comedy noir film interviews a middle aged women accused of poisoning her estranged husband and in-laws, she reflects on her life.

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: Las Posadas (The Inns)

Director’s Name: Patricia Vonne

Writer’s Name: Patricia Vonne, Rubén Blades

Producer: Johnny Villarreal

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: Spanish

Runtime: 3 minutes 49 seconds

Film Description:

9 day Mexican Christmas tradition based on the Nativity story of Mary and Joseph’s intrepid trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem in search for a safe place to stay for the birth of baby Jesus.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: PUPA

Director’s Name: Mizhqua Rinoa Jin Tabuena Natividad

Writer’s Name: Mizhqua Rinoa Jin Tabuena Natividad

Producer: Mizhqua Rinoa Jin Tabuena Natividad

Country of Origin: Ireland

Country of Filming: Ireland

Language: English

Runtime: 4 minutes 5 seconds

Film Description:

‘PUPA’ is an animated short depicting envy, perfectionism, and its destructive effects. Butterflies, often the symbol of beauty, do not start as the perfect specimens we admire. Their metamorphosis from a caterpillar to a beautiful butterfly happens in the pupa, where they melt their bodies down and rebuild themselves to perfection.

And where perfection exists, envy follows.

Envy is an archaic emotion. An amalgamation of the strongest feelings a person may feel. It is a carnal and destructive emotion that even humankind’s oldest religions warn against.

PUPA depicts the push and pull of both perfectionism and envy in the form of two dolls. One being the former favourite, and the other, a shiny new doll. The older doll’s envy starts as a sinking, impending doom of replacement, which eventually pushes her to the edge.

(WINNER)

Original Film Title: My Blue Friend

Director’s Name: Myriam Thyes, Fortunat Froelich

Writer’s Name: Myriam Thyes, Fortunat Froelich

Producer: Myriam Thyes, Fortunat Froelich

Country of Origin: Switzerland

Country of Filming: Switzerland

Language: No Dialogue

Runtime: 13 minutes 18 seconds

Film Description:

Mon Ami Bleu (My Blue Friend) – a multimedia contemplation of a painting. The composer Fortunat Frölich and the video artist Myriam Thyes look at the painting ‘Homage to Mandelbrot No. 11 – Skywalk’ by the Grisons painter Otto W. Liesch. They translate their contemplation of the painting into their respective medium – the composer into polyphonic music, the video artist into a spatial animation. The music and the animation also relate to each other. Thus, a multi-layered multimedia experience emerges from viewing the painting.