Category: BEST STUDENT FILM – ARFF BERLIN 2026

Original Film Title: Tyrant

Director’s Name: Julia Rayner

Director of Photography: Reuben Janet Ellis

Writer’s Name: Julia Rayner

Producer: Julia Rayner, Tony O’Reilly, Bradley R. Bernstein

Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Country of Filming: United Kingdom

Language: English

Runtime: 19 minutes 45 seconds

Film Description:

In 1688, the Catholic King James II, rules over a troubled nation. With the arrival of the Protestant Prince of Orange in England to usurp the crown, King James has fled the battlefield and cannot be found. A runaway king, mistaken for a priest, is captured and incarcerated in the Mayor’s house. Unable to escape, the King, now stripped of his power, witnesses how his politics and religious ideals have affected the common man. James, a flawed human being, reflects on his dream for religious toleration and absolute sovereignty. Asking God for forgiveness, he maintains the belief that he has a divine right to rule as a monarch and will live to fight another day.

Original Film Title: Stay With Me

Director’s Name: Nikoals Sommerstedt

Writer’s Name: Nikoals Sommerstedt

Producer: Kristoffer Hjort Ulbæk

Country of Origin: Denmark

Country of Filming: Denmark

Language: Danish

Runtime: 23 minutes 35 seconds

Film Description:

The young pianist Noah balances a life with his mother, who is suffering from dementia, and a budding romance with the singer Luna. Torn between the past and his longing for a new beginning, he must decide where his heart truly belongs.

Original Film Title: Universe of the Boxfish

Director’s Name: Dr. Alongkot Chukaew

Writer’s Name: Evelyn Jongwutiwes

Producer: Sawitree Prachantasen

Country of Origin: Thailand

Country of Filming: Thailand

Language: English

Runtime: 7 minutes 51 seconds

Film Description:

Universe of the Boxfish is a semi-poetic journey through the eyes of Ava, a 13-year-old girl whose thoughts run deeper than her age. One day, she dives into the ocean searching for the Yellow Boxfish – a tiny, oddly shaped, poisonous, bright-yellow fish – but what she finds is far greater than the world of this little creature. Through Ava’s perspective, the underwater world becomes a “universe” filled with beauty, fragility, and scars left by climate change. She witnesses a whale shark drifting past like a wandering planet, sea turtles gliding in serenity, dugongs grazing on seagrass—but also sees bleached coral, stray fishing nets, and fish schools broken apart. The Yellow Boxfish becomes more than just an object of fascination—it transforms into a “great teacher” that teaches Ava about evolution, patience, vulnerability, and courage to keep living even as the world changes. The film closes with the girl’s simple but lingering question, echoing in the audience’s hearts: “Are we just observers… or will we be the ones who choose to protect?”

Original Film Title: A Fool’s Tycoon

Director’s Name: Jordan Peace

Writer’s Name: Jordan Peace

Producer: Jordan Peace

Country of Origin: Australia

Country of Filming: Australia

Language: English

Runtime: 18 minutes 9 seconds

Film Description:

In the unforgiving absurd frontier, a desperate gold miner’s search for fortune collides with outlaws, betrayal, and the relentless pursuit of the infamous bounty hunter Royce Royale.

Original Film Title: The Secret Ingredient

Director’s Name: Tuan Nguyen, Tom Vonlanthen, Linus Koger, Gianluca Pinarello

Writer’s Name: Tuan Nguyen, Tom Vonlanthen, Linus Koger, Gianluca Pinarello

Producer: Tuan Nguyen, Tom Vonlanthen, Linus Koger, Gianluca Pinarello

Country of Origin: Switzerland

Country of Filming: Switzerland

Language: English

Runtime: 5 minutes

Film Description:

The film follows the story of Radish, a fine dining chef who has just returned home, and her determined attempt to master the legendary phở recipe to perfect her culinary skills. She realizes that the biggest challenge lies not in the ingredients or the cooking techniques, but in the unwavering pride of the person holding that secret recipe.

Original Film Title: Rhythm and Blues – The Ajrak Story

Director’s Name: Parv Bansal

Writer’s Name: Parv Bansal

Producer: Namita and Mohit Bansal

Country of Origin: India

Country of Filming: India

Language: English

Runtime: 19 minutes 59 seconds

Film Description:

A sixteen-year-old follows a childhood memory to the salt desert of Kutch and finds something older and more alive than he imagined: Ajrakh, a textile born in the Indus Valley, coloured by plants and minerals, prepared with the earth’s own materials, untouched by chemicals across four thousand years of making.

Rhythm and Blues: The Ajrakh Story is Parv Bansal’s attempt to bring to the world a fabric so ancient it predates nations and so pure it puts the modern textile industry to shame. A Partition drew a border through its heartland. Ajrakh ignored it. On both sides, the same geometry, the same indigo, the same wooden block meeting cloth in the hands of families who knew, long before the world invented the word sustainable, that you do not take more than the earth will willingly give.

A film about a fabric that has never needed a chemical, never wasted a drop, and never forgotten where it came from.

Original Film Title: The Second Melody

Director’s Name: Quang Minh Châu Huỳnh

Writer’s Name: Quang Minh Châu Huỳnh

Producer: Minh Công Trịnh

Country of Origin: Vietnam

Country of Filming: Vietnam

Language: Vietnamese

Runtime: 24 minutes 16 seconds

Film Description:

Quang, 25, returns home to share dinner with Kiki. The emotional distance between them is evident — they seem to exist in two separate worlds. While Kiki is absorbed in her own recording, Quang eats alone in silence. The evening ends with Quang falling asleep, while Kiki remains awake, overwhelmed by complex emotions.

The next morning, Kiki disappears, leaving behind her recording and a promise: she will meet Quang again once the unfinished composition is completed. Determined, Quang devotes himself to finishing the piece, but finds himself completely blocked.

While repairing a radio at his shop and testing Kiki’s recording, Quang accidentally intercepts a strange transmission between two men from a mysterious organization discussing a flying object and hallucinations appearing in different places. The moment is interrupted when Nhân — Quang’s close friend — visits the shop. Seeing Quang’s creative struggle, Nhân suggests a trip to Da Lat as a way to heal and find new inspiration for the unfinished music.

In Da Lat, at a familiar café once shared with Kiki, Quang receives a mysterious box from her in a dream. Upon waking, he meets Tuấn, an enigmatic man with unusual knowledge about the box, missing people, landslides, and the unidentified flying object. Tuấn helps Quang attempt to complete the composition so he can reunite with Kiki, but their efforts fail.

At their lowest point, Quang’s recorder suddenly captures another transmission — two strange soldiers revealing the location where the flying object will appear. Carrying his guitar, Quang immediately sets out toward the site, where he reunites with Kiki and together they perform an energetic arrangement of Symphony No. 2.

Later, television broadcasts reveal the song climbing the music charts, suggesting that the journey was a fusion of memories, sorrow, and joy experienced by its composer. As friends eventually leave, Quang remains behind, facing the lingering image of Kiki still trapped inside a room.

Original Film Title: Pretty

Director’s Name: Erol Metecan Duren

Writer’s Name: Erol Metecan Duren

Producer: Erol Metecan Duren

Country of Origin: Germany

Country of Filming: Türkiye

Language: English

Runtime: 2 hours 3 minutes 47 seconds

Film Description:

After contact with the ghost of a murdered young girl, Pretty becomes obsessed with uncovering what happened. But as strange occurences plague her home and violence creeps closer, she finds herself in a twisted game of love, murder, and jealousy.

Original Film Title: All Too Much

Director’s Name: Sophie Elisabeth Claus

Writer’s Name: Sophie Elisabeth Claus

Producer: Sophie Elisabeth Claus

Country of Origin: Germany

Country of Filming: Germany

Language: German

Runtime: 5 minutes 9 seconds

Film Description:

All Too Much is an animated short film about overstimulation. On a train ride home the protagonist Lila is struggling to cope with the density of the noise, people and other stimulants. As the ride goes on she finds herself more and more helpless until she finally escapes into a dream world.
Set in Hamburg Germany, the auto-fiktional film includes many sounds recorded in the local public transport, aswell as a self written song called “Morning Dust”.

Original Film Title: Who Broke The Vase? (+30′ version)

Director’s Name: David Aledo Yanguas

Writer’s Name: Eileen Chan, David Aledo Yanguas

Producer: David Aledo Yanguas

Country of Origin: Germany, Spain

Country of Filming: Germany

Language: English

Runtime: 30 minutes 40 seconds

Film Description:

Four interns are invited to a corporate retreat at their boss’s house, who mysteriously cancels last minute. The next morning, a valuable vase is found shattered, and each of them shares their version of what happened during the night, shown in a sequence shot.