Category: ARFF BERLIN 2026

Original Film Title: Ana Alina Masuda and Kento Masuda – PERSONA

Director’s Name: Yuko Kiuchi, Masaki Takefuta, Ryoto Ide

Writer’s Name: Ana Alina Masuda

Producer: Kento Masuda, Seiichi Fujisawa

Country of Origin: Romania

Country of Filming: Japan

Language: English

Runtime: 6 minutes

Film Description:

Original Film Title: SOUL SAMPLING

Director’s Name: Marcello Spoletini

Writer’s Name: Marcello Spoletini

Producer: Fulvio Grubissich

Country of Origin: Italy

Country of Filming: Italy

Language: Italian

Runtime: 1 hour 16 minutes

Film Description:

Frank Delené, a disillusioned former investigator, discovers a clandestine online platform offering users AI avatars indistinguishable from real human beings. He realizes the true nature of the system when he finds himself interacting with the digital clone of a famous television host. After tracking down the woman and revealing the truth to her, the two join forces to uncover those responsible for the unauthorized replication.
Behind this illegal operation stands Hanako Kato, an enigmatic developer of artificial intelligence. She is the creator of Soul Sampling, a groundbreaking system capable of reproducing the deepest and most remote layers of the human psyche.
Amid virtual love, desire, obsession, digital espionage, and stolen identities, the search for the truth will lead the former detective, the celebrated TV presenter, and the young hacker toward unexpected and life-changing consequences.

Original Film Title: CACCIA GROSSA

Director’s Name: Paolo Pier Luigi Guglielmetti

Writer’s Name: Paolo Pier Luigi Guglielmetti

Producer: Paolo Pier Luigi Guglielmetti

Country of Origin: Italy

Country of Filming: Italy

Language: Italian

Runtime: 39 minutes 16 seconds

Film Description:

Original Film Title: milk tooth

Director’s Name: Junyoub Ma

Writer’s Name: Junyoub Ma

Producer: sunyeon lee

Country of Origin: South Korea

Country of Filming: South Korea

Language: Korean

Runtime: 10 minutes 30 seconds

Film Description:

Marie, the timid younger sister, doesn’t want to lose her baby tooth—but she does want the pizza she was promised.
An offbeat yet heartfelt coming-of-age story about sisters who muster the courage to face a small but meaningful challenge.

Original Film Title: The Awake

Director’s Name: Mari Cielo Pajares

Writer’s Name: Mari Cielo Pajares

Producer: Mari Cielo Pajares, Cuscus Perez de Tudela, Mario De Vicente Madrid

Country of Origin: Spain

Country of Filming: Spain

Language: English

Runtime: 13 minutes 4 seconds

Film Description:

Mike wakes up one morning to find that the tattoos covering his entire body have mysteriously vanished. But that impossible event is only the beginning. With every new awakening, reality becomes increasingly unstable, forcing Mike to question his memories, his identity, and whether the life he remembers ever truly existed. As the line between nightmare and reality dissolves, he must uncover the truth before he loses himself and put the entire world in danger.

Original Film Title: One day the sun will only shine for you.

Director’s Name: Gjert Rognli

Writer’s Name: Gjert Rognli

Producer: Gjert Rognli

Country of Origin: Norway

Country of Filming: Norway

Language: Northern Sami

Runtime: 7 minutes 6 seconds

Film Description:

In a world of perpetual change, the trilogy “One day the sun will only shine for you – Soames beaivvi beaivváš báitá dušše fal dutnje” takes us on a journey through our hedonistic and fragile contemporary age, where the shadows of our actions stretch far into the future. It is a mythological voyage through excess, unrest, noise, injustice, power, and pleasure. It carries with it fragments of the intangible knowledge from the Sami and Kven cultural heritage.

Original Film Title: Die Before You Die – Triggered

Director’s Name: Rafael Maria Friebe

Writer’s Name: Rafael Maria Friebe

Producer: Rafael Maria Friebe

Country of Origin: Germany

Country of Filming: Germany

Language: English

Runtime: 28 minutes 55 seconds

Film Description:

Kai lives behind a flawless mask — the successful businessman with the sports car, the mirrored sunglasses, the impenetrable wall and role he plays. But when a moment of inner collapse shatters his polished exterior, he is hurled into the darkest corridors of his own psyche.

At a ritual-like dinner, he meets Mira — a silent, luminous figure who embodies the archetypal Anima, the soul he has long abandoned. When she removes her mask, she exposes a truth Kai cannot bear. His own mask is fused to his skin. He tears at it in desperation,and his frantic attempts to tear it off mark the beginning of his ego’s unraveling. The woman Kai had pushed away in the opening scene —his girlfriend— remains absent, representing the personal, relational Anima, the part of him capable of human intimacy.

He is drawn into a surreal inner world where an actor sheds costumes like discarded selves, where hallways breathe, where mirrors refuse to reflect him. Even temptation rises in bodily form — a bartender pushing him back toward the intoxication of forgetfulness, the seductive pull of the Shadow, back into the numbness of unconsciousness.

Kai resists, not heroically, but because something within refuses to die without being seen.

The deeper he travels, the thinner his ego becomes. A mountaintop at dawn becomes the threshold: here he confronts the silence beneath all his masks. His breath merges with the world. His identity dissolves. What emerges is not enlightenment, but something quieter and more dangerous — the first glimpse of the Self, the center he never knew.

When Kai returns to the world, he is transformed in the smallest ways: he kneels to return a lost teddy bear to a child — his own forgotten innocence — and then meets his girlfriend with a tenderness he could never access before. No drama, no revelation. Just truth.

The journey ends where it began: in the ordinary world.
But this time, the Persona is gone.
And Kai finally truly appears.