Category: 2026 WSXA Barcelona

(WINNER)

Original Film Title: The War That Never Was

Director’s Name: Jimmy Woolley

Writer’s Name: Jimmy Woolley

Producer: Jimmy Woolley

Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Country of Filming: United Kingdom

Language: English

Runtime: 5 minutes 39 seconds

Film Description:

Facing collapsing poll numbers, President Vann embarks on a bold experiment: a war engineered for optics.

Marketed as a non-lethal military engagement, the war is carefully staged, endlessly broadcast, and optimised for public consumption.

As the spectacle escalates, the line between performance and reality begins to blur. What starts as controlled political theatre drifts toward consequences that can no longer be edited out, building to an unsettling final turn.

The War That Never Was is a blazing political satire about power, image, and modern conflict.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Living Cultures: Human Towers of Catalonia

Director’s Name: Matthew Terrell

Writer’s Name: Matthew Terrell

Producer: Matthew Terrell

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 5 minutes 39 seconds

Film Description:

360° Video Documentary exploring the history and living heritage of the Castellers—Catalonia’s human tower builders. Filmed in Barcelona’s Poble Sec neighborhood, the piece places viewers inside the crowded plaza as the Castellers de Poble Sec assemble a Tres de Set, capturing the tension, teamwork, and breath-holding silence as children climb to the summit. The immersive format lets audiences feel the press of the crowd, hear the rhythmic gralla music, and stand within the human base as the tower rises overhead.

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: EVIL MASK

Director’s Name: Wonjin KIM

Writer’s Name: Wonjin KIM

Producer: Wonjin KIM

Country of Origin: South Korea

Country of Filming: South Korea

Language: English, Korean

Runtime: 14 minutes 30 seconds

Film Description:

In 1920, a boy loses his parents and his sight to the demon Oni, brought into Joseon by the Japanese army to erase the nation’s spirit. Years later, he is granted power by the gods of Joseon and becomes a blind shamanic sculptor, carving the forms of demons that emerge from the darkness with his fingertips. As folk faith is trampled, he prepares a final resistance — sealing the Oni through sacred masks. Though he loses everything, the solidarity of the people and the united strength of shamans across the land lead him to complete the ultimate ritual of Ak-tal, risking his life in a last exorcising ceremony for Joseon’s fate.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Echo

Director’s Name: Richard Jones

Writer’s Name: Richard Jones

Producer: Richard Jones, Sharon Lewis

Country of Origin: Australia

Country of Filming: Australia

Language: English

Runtime: 14 minutes 59 seconds

Film Description:

In a desolate junkyard of discarded machines, a decommissioned family service robot named Echo reawakens with fragmented memories of the family she once loved. Guided by an older robot and a silent rescue dog, Echo must confront the reality of her abandonment and decide whether to erase her capacity for love, or hold onto it as proof that she was once more than a machine. ECHO is a 360° VR animated short exploring consciousness, identity, and what it means to belong in a world that has moved on.

(ENVISION AWARD WINNER)

Original Film Title: Anomalia

Director’s Name: Delphine Sicard Malafosse

Writer’s Name: Delphine Sicard Malafosse

Producer: Delphine Sicard Malafosse

Country of Origin: France

Country of Filming: English, French

Language: English

Runtime: 7 minutes 41 seconds

Film Description:

Anomalia is a science-fiction documentary that explores the concept of anomaly as a space of resistance. Once perceived as rare deviations, some species thrive when environmental conditions suddenly shift in their favor. Across multiple cycles of evolution, the film questions our perception of difference: is an anomaly truly an anomaly, or is it the very condition of survival?

Guided by a voice-over in the style of a nature documentary, the film draws the viewer into a political fable where nature becomes a mirror for human struggles. Behind the hybrid creatures and unstable worlds emerge the stories of queer identities and all those whom society has attempted to push to the margins. Like monstrous species that find their place in disrupted ecosystems, minorities — particularly LGBTQI+ communities — invent new narratives, resist imposed norms, and transform what was once seen as a “deviation” into a vital force.

The film takes on a hybrid form, between documentary and parable, using the medium of artificial intelligence itself — a generator of anomalies by essence. Artificially created fauna and flora, in constant mutation, blur the boundaries between reality and fiction. Anomalia becomes a parable on oppression, domination, and the possibility of reversing the gaze: what is labeled an “anomaly” is often nothing more than the world’s refusal to recognize other forms of life, love, and existence

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: Vanilla Lily – A Stroke of Destiny

Director’s Name: Keeley Turner

Writer’s Name: Keeley Turner, Sheila Ivy Traister, Alex Galvez

Producer: Servane Roy Berton

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: France

Language: English

Runtime: 22 minutes 44 seconds

Film Description:

After a shocking late-night encounter with a mysterious intruder, Lily and Pierre are left reeling. The man vanished into the shadows, but not without leaving behind a letter—an enigma wrapped in nonsense. As dawn breaks, their curiosity turns to discovery: the letter is a cipher, and the name it reveals sends a chill through them both—Count Saint Germain.

Soon, another message arrives, inviting them to the majestic and haunting Château de Chambord for a private meeting with the Count himself. Hesitant but determined, Lily and Pierre set off to uncover the truth. Inside the grand chateau, they finally come face-to-face with the elusive Count, whose charm is as unsettling as his knowledge is uncanny.

What follows is a conversation that challenges everything Lily and Pierre understand about time, science, and the very nature of reality. The Count shares bold claims about his past and presents Lily with a curious gift—one that holds the key to time travel, secrets of the universe, and her only way home.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Symbiosis/\Dysbiosis

Director’s Name: Tosca Terán

Writer’s Name: Tosca Terán

Producer: Tosca Terán, Sönke Kirchhof

Country of Origin: Canada

Country of Filming: Canada

Language: English

Runtime: 25 minutes

Film Description:

A multiplayer experience where Players and fungal Mycelium can synchronize within a virtual old-growth forest. EEG and bio-electrical data streams enable Players to see, feel and interact with the microscopic organisms around, between and on them. Living mycelium responds to players by triggering scent, haptics, vfx, and sound.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: inbetween (360°)

Director’s Name: Thomas Kutschker

Writer’s Name: Thomas Kutschker

Producer: Thomas Kutschker

Country of Origin: Germany

Country of Filming: Germany

Language: English

Runtime: 10 minutes 30 seconds

Film Description:

A thought-provoking exploration of places and spaces – in collages. Fascinating hotel rooms, idyllic
landscapes and the question: what is home? Amazement at the familiar in the unfamiliar, doubts
about one‘s own memories and the recurring question: what is home?
Travelling through time. The sequence of visually stunning regions of the world and mysterious interiors
is a search for traces of a story in memories – or variants of a story. ‘inbetween / dazwischen’
is a photographic film. A meditation in images on the concept of home and its construction.

(FINALIST)

Original Film Title: Meridian Transmissions

Director’s Name: Eric PATRICK

Writer’s Name: Eric PATRICK

Producer: Eric PATRICK

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: No Dialogue

Runtime: 12 minutes 56 seconds

Film Description:

A quotidian meditation on surveillance and the decay of modernity.

(HONORABLE MENTION)

Original Film Title: The Flock

Director’s Name: Chen Wang

Writer’s Name: Chen Wang

Producer: Chen Wang

Country of Origin: China

Country of Filming: China

Language: English

Runtime: 7 minutes 40 seconds

Film Description:

This film is a collaborative work generated using multiple AI tools,
depicting the protagonist’s unsettling discoveries on her first day at a new company. The workplace exudes the mystique and solemnity of a religious sanctuary while maintaining the order and oppression of a corporate office. The employees move and speak in eerie unison, as if participating in a silent yet sacred workplace mass. The protagonist, bewildered and full of questions, begins her work—only to find that no matter how hard she tries, the progress bar remains frozen. By this point, an overwhelming sense of suffocation has filled her workstation…
In this space, language has nearly vanished, and the boundary
between the sacred and the mechanical blurs. The film persistently
raises questions to the viewer: Are we undergoing some form of
‘modern ritual’? As societal rhythms accelerate, has the progress bar become a measure of psychological tempo? Are we, without realizing it, participating in a new kind of faith?