Category: BEST STUDENT FILM – ARFF PARIS 2026

Original Film Title: IDENTITY ROAD

Director’s Name: LIANA ADANI

Writer’s Name: LIANA ADANI

Producer: LIANA ADANI

Country of Origin: Israel

Country of Filming: Israel

Language: English, Hebrew

Runtime: 45 minutes

Film Description:

Marion, a French Holocaust survivor in his eighties, carries decades of loss, unresolved anger, and the burden of a fractured identity. Raised by a father who sent him to church as an altar boy, he lived his childhood as a Christian, only to confront Auschwitz as a Jew—punished for an identity he had not yet claimed. This tension shaped his adult life: Marion married and divorced multiple times, struggling to form lasting attachments, and even with Roni, his last wife, whose love awakened a rare tenderness in him; their bond could not withstand the weight of his past.

Fourteen years after he met Roni, Marion travels to Israel to celebrate his youngest son Ariel’s Bar Mitzvah, yet is soon swept into a torrent of memory and emotion. Silent questions haunt him: “What if…?”—what if he had stayed with Roni, with Ariel, to live and die in Israel? He knows he will return to Arizona, yet the thought illuminates a life he might have lived.
His journey winds through places he had seen and lived during the years he had spent here. Between beaches, antiquities, and empty graves he feels loss and unfulfilled hope, and acknowledges the impossibility of certain dreams. Marion, who still carries the scars of his childhood, knows from the beginning of this precious journey to celebrate his son’s Bar Mitzvah, until the last days in the hospital back in Arizona that Israel is a place of love and life, yet such simple love and happiness remain impossible for him.
During the Bar Mitzvah journey, Marion takes part in a ritual he never experienced at thirteen, surprising himself and those around him. What began as a simple journey to celebrate with his son becomes something far more complex: a farewell to the moments he shared in Israel with Roni, a confrontation with memories long hidden and denied from childhood, and a reckoning with his own identity. A journey for a party becomes a journey through his past, his love, and his life. The journey becomes an intimate farewell to a world and a self he may never touch again.
Identity Road moves between past and present, memory and reality, in a poetic rhythm that mirrors Marion’s consciousness. It is a story of survival, longing, and the fragile hope of reconciliation.

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: LÒM : La Douceur du Vent

Director’s Name: Naja TOUTOUYOUTTE TARIAFFE, Camille LANDRAUD

Writer’s Name: Naja TOUTOUYOUTTE TARIAFFE, Camille LANDRAUD

Producer: Naja TOUTOUYOUTTE TARIAFFE, Camille LANDRAUD

Country of Origin: France

Country of Filming: France

Language: French

Runtime: 29 minutes 1 second

Film Description:

Tim, jeune ado, revient dans sa ville natale. Il retrouve sa bande d’amis de longue date et son meilleur ami AJ, avec qui il a tout partagé. Mais alors que AJ commence à passer un peu de temps avec un autre de la bande, Tim se rend compte qu’il est perturbé par cette relation. Et que peut-être ce n’est pas que de la jalousie amicale.

Original Film Title: ISLAND’ SERENITY

Director’s Name: KAI-CHENG WU

Writer’s Name: KAI-CHENG WU

Producer: Chin-Ju Chung

Country of Origin: Taiwan

Country of Filming: Taiwan

Language: Chinese

Runtime: 26 minutes 25 seconds

Film Description:

In 2030, Tao-Wan splits into two island states: The Democratic Republic of South Bay and The North Republic due to violent suppression.
Years later, Rossie (Lucia Kuo), a former journalist, sits for an interview and recalls her unbearable missions with a team known as “The Boundless of Penetrating,” which included ZhongGe, AhZhi, and YuZai, representing The Democratic Republic of South Bay. Four of them cross both borders to rescue and escort Lim Zheng Ru, a mole intelligence agent in the Republic of North Peak, who owns a confidential piece of hardware.
Pursuing and evading conflicts all along the missions exposed the closet of a nuclear bomb in that hardware, while also shattering the patriotic teenager, Yu Zai. He fights for his teammate and sacrifices for the country.

Original Film Title: The Literary Mind and Carving F(x)

Director’s Name: Xinyuan Ma

Writer’s Name: Xinyuan Ma

Producer: Xinyuan Ma

Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Country of Filming: United Kingdom

Language: English

Runtime: 8 minutes

Film Description:

Everything happened within the last hour before dusk: a writer sits in front of his desk watching the last sunlight falling onto his porcelain bowl, synaesthetically tastes and starts to roam with his literary consciousness: in the changing clouds, he sees a rebellion of points in the Cartesian coordinate system against F(x), breaking through dimensions of line, plane, volume, reaching a curious beach with Sisyphus playing on a pink slide and ancient Athenians practicing athletics with a series of queer instruments.

An experimental film inspired by the archival text ‘Literary Mind and Carving Dragon’ on the history of ancient Chinese literature, but here the dragon shows itself as an abstracted mathematical function F(x), invisible but its effects continuously exerted on point x and y. Looking back into history, this film attempts to re-ask important questions repeatedly brought up but in a playworld: what does it mean to heartfeltly write?

Original Film Title: Til Death Do Us Part

Director’s Name: Kierra Mariah

Writer’s Name: Kierra Mariah, Rhett Stuart

Producer: Zanifa Darville, Devine Parris

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 13 minutes 47 seconds

Film Description:

A young, soon to be CEO must take drastic measures when his mistress threatens to expose their affair.

Original Film Title: The Mudlarks

Director’s Name: Jamie-Lee Carrington

Writer’s Name: Jamie-Lee Carrington

Producer: Jamie-Lee Carrington

Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Country of Filming: United Kingdom

Language: English

Runtime: 5 minutes

Film Description:

Set against the shifting tides of the River Thames, this five-minute documentary follows three London mudlarkers from different walks of life. Jason, an architect with years of experience, shares his deep connection to the river’s hidden history. Anne, a social worker, finds joy and companionship in the foreshore alongside her husband. And Oona, a young student, recalls her first find, a beetle, and reflects on how mudlarking helped her navigate grief after losing her mother. Together, their stories reveal how the act of searching in the mud becomes something much deeper: a way to connect, heal, and find meaning in the fragments of the past.

Original Film Title: Piano

Director’s Name: Fangke Zhou

Writer’s Name: Fangke Zhou

Producer: Fangke Zhou

Country of Origin:

Country of Filming:

Language:

Runtime: 5 minutes

Film Description:

Original Film Title: Homes for Hornbills

Director’s Name: Yanin Tangkaravakoon

Writer’s Name: Yanin Tangkaravakoon, Yupa Petcharit Rattanajan

Producer: Pennapa Tangkaravakoon

Country of Origin: Thailand

Country of Filming: Thailand

Language: English

Runtime: 12 minutes

Film Description:

Homes for Hornbills is a 12-minute documentary that follows 15-year-old Yanin Tangkaravakoon as she transforms childhood craft into conservation. Hornbills, known as “farmers of the forest”, are vital in dispersing seeds and regenerating ecosystems. Due to deforestation, Thailand’s forests are vanishing, and hornbills are losing the ancient trees they depend on to nest. When Yanin first hears a hornbill’s call, it becomes a call to action. With access to her family’s polymer lab and support from Thailand’s Hornbill Research Foundation, she helps develop a new artificial nest, which was then installed on Yao Noi Island, where nesting is in crisis. Narrated by Yanin herself, this film captures the challenges of conservation work: not every nest is used, and progress isn’t instant. But what emerges is a moving portrait of patience, ingenuity, and hope. At its heart, Homes for Hornbills is a story of a young girl bridging science and storytelling to give endangered hornbills a second chance, and of a community quietly proving that resilience can take root and soar even in a disappearing forest.

Original Film Title: Soggy

Director’s Name: Hanna Pierpont

Writer’s Name: Hanna Pierpont

Producer: Hanna Pierpont

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 5 minutes

Film Description:

Trapped in the monotony of office life, every day passes by in a depressing, soggy repetition. That is, until a new coworker arrives, adding an unexpected spark and crunch to her once-soggy lifestyle.