Category: GLOBE AWARD – dir. ARFF Amsterdam 2026

Original Film Title: NNC

Director’s Name: Miguel Santos Regal

Writer’s Name: Miguel Santos Regal

Producer: Miguel Santos Regal, Ken Prado

Country of Origin: Philippines

Country of Filming: Philippines

Language: English

Runtime: 19 minutes

Film Description:

A major sponsor prematurely terminates its endorsement deal with NNC, a TV network. Despite the valiant effort of Stephanie Serrano, NNC’s Chief Brand Officer, the sponsor remains steadfast in its decision to cut ties with the network.

Worse, NNC’s Chief Finance Officer, Bobby Alcala, discloses to Stephanie that the network is already insolvent and will probably be shut down in the next 3 years. Stephanie insists Bobby to divulge the company’s declining status in the board meeting later that day.

During this meeting, Bobby presents the latest figures in the company’s financial statements and his forecast of NNC’s future. To support Bobby, Stephanie suggests to the Board the introduction of several changes to its programming in order to attract a different demographic of the general audience.

Unfortunately, Paul Mariano, the President and CEO, rejects Stephanie’s proposals. He explains to the Board that no drastic changes should be made. Mr. Mariano claims that the ratings are irrelevant since NNC’s social media presence has significantly improved from last year. For him, the success of a media entity ultimately hinges on its social media relevance.

60 days later, Stephanie packs her belongings in the office While this is happening, we hear in the background (V.O.) a news report of a group of creditors filing a bankruptcy case against NNC before the Regional Trial Court of Makati City.

Original Film Title: AGELESS: Real Talk. Real Change. To End Ageism.

Director’s Name: Joshua Dorsey

Writer’s Name: Joshua Dorsey

Producer: Before Film, The Cummings Centre (Pauline Grunberg)

Country of Origin: Canada

Country of Filming: Canada

Language: English

Runtime: 40 minutes 55 seconds

Film Description:

An 87-year-old explosives blaster still working remote job sites and a 24-year-old engineer fighting to be taken seriously reveal how age shapes opportunity, identity, and belonging. Through narration-free portraits across urban and rural Quebec, AGELESS assembles a mosaic of voices that exposes the subtle and overt ways assumptions about age influence work, confidence, and connection – and what becomes possible when those assumptions begin to fracture.

Original Film Title: Our Brilliant Destruction

Director’s Name: Sarah Bitely

Writer’s Name: Vince Grant

Producer: Vince Grant, Chris King

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 51 minutes 3 seconds

Film Description:

Fueled by a powerful album about climate change, this immersive music film charts a journey through the disasters we’ve created, and the hope we still might save our collective home.

Original Film Title: Behind Silent Eyes

Director’s Name: William Collinson, Ian Goehring

Writer’s Name: Ian Goehring

Producer: William Collinson, Ian Goehring

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: Armenian

Runtime: 13 minutes 16 seconds

Film Description:

The True story of Ianu Tebetru – his life and journey, Raised in a Romanian orphanage where he suffered termatic abuse, he believed his dreams had come true when at seven years – old, Ianu was adopted by an american couple. But his adolescent years were disrupted by his attachment disorder and delinquent behavior until at age twelve, his adopted parents gave him up to the state and into the care of social services.
Ianu spent the next six years feeling displaced and unloved, living in one group home and then another until he was released at ninteen — lost and alone. In behind Silent Eyes, Ianu reveals his adandonment, abuse, addiction, and recovery,

Original Film Title: Forgotten Children Sing

Director’s Name: Mark Lee Hegarty

Writer’s Name: Mark Lee Hegarty

Producer: Mark Lee Hegarty

Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Country of Filming: Liberia, United Kingdom, United States

Language: English

Runtime: 1 hour 4 minutes 25 seconds

Film Description:

Forgotten Children Sing is a documentary following the Matsiko World Orphan Choir, children living in extreme poverty in post–civil war Liberia, West Africa, who film and narrate their own story, offering a rare, intimate view of life through their eyes.

Their journey takes an unexpected turn when, after a cancelled flight en route to the United States, the children meet Grammy-nominated jazz composer Amina Figarova. A chance conversation becomes an unlikely collaboration, leading the choir to perform Figarova’s Suite for Africa alongside newly arranged Liberian songs.

What follows is an extraordinary journey across the U.S. jazz circuit, including performances at major festivals, among them the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, where the choir become the first artists from Liberia to appear on these stages.

Filmed largely by the children themselves, Forgotten Children Sing challenges perceptions of children living in poverty, centring agency, joy and cultural pride. At its heart, the film is a love letter to Liberia, the country the children call home, and an invitation to see both its people and its possibilities differently.

Original Film Title: THE WAR, DONALD TRUMP AND US

Director’s Name: GUY LAGACHE

Writer’s Name: GUY LAGACHE

Producer: PHILIPPE PECOUL

Country of Origin: France

Country of Filming: Belgium, Canada, Estonia, France, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom

Language: English, French

Runtime: 1 hour 42 minutes 6 seconds

Film Description:

Four years after the historic documentary “A President, Europe, and War,” filmed at the heart of power with President Emmanuel Macron’s diplomatic teams, Eléphant, Mile Production, and France Télévisions present Guy Lagache’s new film, “War, Donald Trump, and Us.”
This 100-minute documentary recounts a year of danger for Europe.

Original Film Title: Respect My Crown: The Rise of African American Women in California Politics

Director’s Name: Pamela Bright-Moon

Writer’s Name: Jocelyn Y. Stewart, Alisa Bass Covington, Pamela Bright-Moon

Producer: Alisa Bass-Covington, Pamela Bright-Moon

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 1 hour 26 minutes

Film Description:

Respect My Crown: The Rise of African American Women in California Politics is a feature length documentary film, which explores the significant contributions of African American women in leadership in the areas of politics, labor, and community activism in the State of California. Although California is currently known for being a liberal state that has not always been its history.

Our documentary explores the rise of Black women in California politics and the road they paved to achieve success. Our story unfolds to show the obstacles, the challenges, the ambition and aspirations of the women achievers over the decades to our current day leadership envisioned through the lives of living and deceased Black female elected officials, their counterparts in Labor organizations and in the “Mothers” of the Community who are on parallel journeys. The film will highlight their courage, sacrifices, and achievements for the betterment of their communities, cities and throughout the state of California as a whole.

Immersed in the films timeline is the backdrop of the existential circumstances of the day. Each decade in the last sixty years has had its own set of challenges, wars, poverty, racial uprisings, presenting each bill, each vote, each march, each decision with its own set of residual fallout which could affect the communities they represent for years to come. California has sent more women of color to the House and Senate than any other state. Respect My Crown intends to show the role of intersectionality in politics and public service in the state of California. The film also serves an archival project of the Mervyn M. Dymally African American Political and Economic Institute (MDAAPEI), a non-partisan public policy center at California State University, Dominguez Hills.

Original Film Title: Outlasting – Living Archives of Older Queers

Director’s Name: Ana Cristina Santos, Nuno Barbosa

Writer’s Name: Ana Cristina Santos

Producer: TRACE – Tracing Queer Citizenship Over Time: Age, Ageism and Age-related Policies, Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra

Country of Origin: Portugal

Country of Filming: Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia

Language: English, Greek (Modern), Italian, Portuguese, Slovenian

Runtime: 56 minutes 8 seconds

Film Description:

Outlasting – the verb has many meanings and nuances: enduring, persisting, remaining. Older LGBTQI+ people are those who persisted against all odds. When the world built up walls of hate speech and shame, they shouted louder and walked prouder. When words fail, queer ageing bodies remain as powerful reminders of the right to be, unashamed and unapologetic. Their embodied memories constitute a living archive and, as such, offer unreplaceable insights for new and adequate approaches to sexual and gender diversity, and ageing.

Older queers matter today more than ever. This generation remembers too well how easy it is for authoritarian regimes to remove rights taken for granted. To avoid repeating mistakes of the past, we need to remember so as not to forget. Racing against time, every word we gathered from the extraordinary people we met in Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Slovenia is a treasure and will help future generations in understanding who we are by learning where we came from. This legacy will contribute to a safer world for all, based on democracy, freedom and kindness.
So… what’s next? What will we do with everything we learned? This is up to you, up to us. This is our collective everlasting responsibility, because we were born in this particular time, in that particular place, and we were born to outlast.

Original Film Title: The Green Bench

Director’s Name: Sarah Fodey

Writer’s Name: Sarah Fodey

Producer: Sarah Fodey, Amanda Barakat, Han Nguyen

Country of Origin: Canada

Country of Filming: Canada, United Kingdom

Language: English

Runtime: 1 hour 23 minutes 51 seconds

Film Description:

The Green Bench follows seniors returning to the places that shaped their lives, some for the final time. As memory and present day intertwine, the film explores aging, identity, and the enduring pull of home. Intimate and universal, it is a meditation on connection, belonging, and the lives we carry with us.

Original Film Title: The Witchdoctor and the Windmill

Director’s Name: Robert Hamilton

Writer’s Name: Sara Louise Bodinar

Producer: Robert Hamilton, Linda (Tjunkaya) Syddick Napaltjarri, Simon Davis

Country of Origin: Australia

Country of Filming: Australia

Language: English

Runtime: 57 minutes 47 seconds

Film Description:

“The Witchdoctor and the Windmill” explores the life of the Indigenous artist, Linda Syddick Napaltjarri. She was the last of the world’s 6 ‘clever women’ who after experiencing a fully traditional, nomadic desert childhood went on to win Australia’s biggest art prize.

Linda’s insistence that she had her stepfather’s permission to paint his Dreaming stories (men stories are usually forbidden for women to paint amongst her people; the Pintupi) cast her as a maverick and led to a rift between family and community.

This film explores Linda’s personal and community struggles alongside the larger themes of colliding cultures as the Pintupi confronted new and bewildering intrusions into their country.

Her paintings are visual records of first contact in the 1940s as the Pintupi began their first encounters with White Australia. She was the first Pintupi Modernist and last senior female artist of her era.

This biopic traces Linda’s life coming in from the western desert in a traditionally raised family to her painting journey which took her art to the heady heights of the European art scene, and then back to the art sheds of Alice Springs. The Australian government gifted Linda’s work to visiting dignitaries, and yet she passed away as a prophet without honour. With these exclusive interviews and her full co-operation, we wanted to acknowledge her astonishing legacy and place in history.