Category: Best Experimental Film – 2026 WSXA Barcelona

(WINNER)

Original Film Title: Double Code

Director’s Name: Chiara Basile Fasolo

Writer’s Name: Chiara Basile Fasolo

Producer: Chiara Basile Fasolo

Country of Origin: Italy

Country of Filming: Italy

Language: English

Runtime: 15 minutes

Film Description:

Emma is a brilliant young lawyer who lives in the historic city of Pisa, in Italy. Faced with a challenging case that pushes her to the edge, she starts relying more and more on Eden, an AI assistant, and using ‘her’ for daily for recipes, lifestyle, and all in-house domotics. At first, Eden is just a tool. But day by day its presence begins to shape Emma’s decisions, relationships, and sense of self. Amongst professional pressure, emotional conflicts, and ethical dilemmas, Emma must ask herself a crucial question: is she the one making her own choices or is Eden taking over and shaping her life. A timely story that challenges the boundaries between human autonomy and the artificial world.

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: Trouble

Director’s Name: Laura Bachman

Writer’s Name: Laura Bachman

Producer: Vincent Munié

Country of Origin: France

Country of Filming: Belgium

Language: No Dialogue

Runtime: 19 minutes 26 seconds

Film Description:

A young woman struggling with her haptophobia, trapped by her fear of touching and being touched. A visceral battle with herself, a fight against the ghosts of this phobia. As she steps off a bus, her hat flies away to another world…

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Faustus 1 – the seduction

Director’s Name: Roger Rudenstein

Writer’s Name: D

Producer: Gary Gray, John Feraro

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 1 hour 23 minutes 34 seconds

Film Description:

A Tump-like real estate mogul sells his soul to the Devil for youth and knowledge

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Avatars of Destiny: The Saga Begins

Director’s Name: Ess-Jee Rautenbach

Writer’s Name: Ess-Jee Rautenbach

Producer: Ess-Jee Rautenbach

Country of Origin: South Africa

Country of Filming: South Africa

Language: English

Runtime: 20 minutes

Film Description:

Step into a universe where ancient prophecy meets futuristic innovation, and destiny is not inherited it’s unlocked. Conceived by visionary author Ess‑Jee Rautenbach, Avatars of Destiny begins as a concept short film, a proof‑of‑vision that blends epic fantasy, spiritual sci‑fi, and techno‑mythic storytelling into a cinematic journey of transformation.

(AUDIENCE AWARD WINNER)

Original Film Title: RUBEDO

Director’s Name: Cecilia Bertoni

Writer’s Name: Cecilia Bertoni

Producer: Associazione Culturale Dello Scompiglio

Country of Origin: Italy

Country of Filming: Italy

Language: Italian

Runtime: 25 minutes 6 seconds

Film Description:

The video RUBEDO originates from the homonymous video installation by Cecilia Bertoni that draws on the theme of death and dying, through the celebration of her own funeral, but also tells of the relevance and instability of living, in an individual and collective sense, in its affinities with the mysteries and the imagery of the alchemical process.
Existence – in the light of life as a complete work, with all its falls, with its little deaths – reaching the end can reveal itself as a fabric full of irony, colours and even lightness. And those who remain celebrate their sadness, but also honour the poetry of the moment. In the video, the visitors are transported to a disembodied elsewhere, in which the transition and transformation of every daily gesture becomes a ritual.
The word “rubedo” evokes the eternal transformation of the body and soul.
The two videos RUBEDO and On the corner, contrasting in aesthetic and sound choices, follow the story of a single figure that changes, dances, laughs, walks, travels, rests, abandons itself and becomes aware of every mistake, fall and uncertainty.

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: Scattered Sea

Director’s Name: Lia Sáile

Writer’s Name: Lia Sáile

Producer: Lia Sáile

Country of Origin: Germany

Country of Filming: Germany, Malta, Morocco

Language: English

Runtime: 13 minutes 37 seconds

Film Description:

Scattered Sea follows 17 performers spanning two generations from the MENA/Maghreb region and Europe as they trace gestures of relation across borders—within a world fractured by historical trauma, displacement, and the longing for belonging. Through a poetic language of Magical Realism, performance, and documentary, the film constructs speculative spaces for decolonial reflection and future-oriented imaginaries.

Filmed across Morocco, Malta, and Germany, the geopolitical triangle shaped by layered colonial legacies and contemporary frictions between Europe and the MENA region is reflected. Through minimal gestures and symbolic actions, the performers inscribe and unsettle space. Hybrid zones of proximity and distance unfold: ruins, gardens, and streets are roamed; symbols are traced and deconstructed; sand is scattered and shaped into ephemeral islands between continents. The search for remnants transforms into a speculative act of placing traces—daring fragile beginnings.
The work weaves together cultural memory, decolonial inquiry, and historiographic critique, offering counter-narratives that resist linear temporality and binary world orders. It opens hybrid spaces for the reimagining of social and aesthetic imaginaries attuned to plural futures.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Intensity

Director’s Name: Christophe Schaeffer

Writer’s Name: Christophe Schaeffer

Producer: Christophe Schaeffer

Country of Origin: France

Country of Filming: France

Language: French

Runtime: 5 minutes 16 seconds

Film Description:

Silhouettes pass in front of a painting by Georges de La Tour, opening and closing the image through their movements. The gaze does not impose itself; it takes shape in the interval, in fragments, through appearances that are always provisional. Seeing becomes a crossing.

In black and white, light hesitates, withdraws, returns. The painting acts as a discreet mirror: it does not offer itself all at once, but reveals—through the passage of bodies—a presence that is sought as much as it is received.

The sound improvisation by Herb Elsky accompanies this circulation—not as commentary, but as vibration. It extends the rhythm of movements and glances, carving out an inner space where the image ceases to be an object and becomes an experience.

At the end, a flame appears in color—fragile, alive.
A point of irreducible intensity, where light no longer illuminates but exists, reminding us that seeing is not about capture, but about becoming present.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: CACCIA GROSSA

Director’s Name: Paolo Pier Luigi Guglielmetti

Writer’s Name: Paolo Pier Luigi Guglielmetti

Producer: Grace Stromatt

Country of Origin: Italy

Country of Filming: Italy

Language: Italian

Runtime: 39 minutes 16 seconds

Film Description: