Category: BEST STUDENT FILM – WSXA PARIS 2026

Original Film Title: Blueprint

Director’s Name: Lina Westphal, Ronja Böhme

Writer’s Name: Lina Westphal

Producer: Flo Ried, Sandra Hoch

Country of Origin: Germany

Country of Filming: Germany

Language: English

Runtime: 16 minutes 14 seconds

Film Description:

Blueprint tells the story of Fred, a young man who, on his way home after a night of heavy partying,
gradually loses control of his perception. What begins as a seemingly real journey home through the urban spaces of Berlin evolves into a hallucinatory sequence of places, encounters, and situations that reflect central aspects of his life: family, relationships, friends, and his professional life.
As the film progresses, familiar structures increasingly dissolve. Familiar spaces become unknown labyrinths, people lose their faces, identities shift. Fred feels constantly watched and pursued; a growing sense of threat and mistrust, coupled with utter helplessness, pervades the entire film. This escalation of fear and paranoia intensifies the inner loss of control and leads to a further shattering of orientation, self-confidence, and one’s own reality.

The title Blueprint stands for the blueprint of a life. The spaces shown in the film represent those fundamental areas of life that provide identity and orientation. In the condensed depiction of their gradual loss, it becomes clear how an existence fades away in the context of addiction (drugs), fear, helplessness, and psychological overload.

Original Film Title: The Way the Waves come

Director’s Name: Jeongmin Lee

Writer’s Name: Jeongmin Lee

Producer: Jeongmin Lee

Country of Origin: South Korea

Country of Filming: South Korea

Language: Korean

Runtime: 24 minutes 21 seconds

Film Description:

Waves begin somewhere far away, gradually growing larger until they finally break at their peak, coming closest to us at that moment.
I felt that this movement closely resembles the way we experience love.

Love grows over time, but at a certain point it becomes familiar, and we often mistake that familiarity for its disappearance, leading us to part ways. Yet the greater the wave that breaks, the more ripples it leaves behind—traces that reach even closer to us. Through this film, I wanted to express love as such a lingering afterimage, using the metaphor of waves.

When the same place, the same position, and the same actions no longer feel exciting, is it because we have truly grown distant from one another? Or is it because we once loved so deeply that the traces of that love continue to remain in our everyday lives, even after separation?

Rather than encouraging emotional immersion in the characters, I wanted the audience to physically sense the changes in their relationship. For this reason, I intentionally framed both characters together in wide shots, maintaining a certain distance.
Since I believe changes in love are not caused by dramatic events but by subtle differences in everyday life, I relied on repeated compositions to capture those quiet shifts.

Plot
A male fairy who believes love takes the shape of waves approaches a woman who believes that love should always remain exciting.

Original Film Title: UMBRA

Director’s Name: Danny Bohmer

Writer’s Name: Danny Bohmer

Producer: Danny Bohmer

Country of Origin: United States

Country of Filming: United States

Language: English

Runtime: 6 minutes 45 seconds

Film Description:

After losing power at home alone, a young woman notices a strange figure lurking in the darkness.

Original Film Title: The Reflection

Director’s Name: Rati Adeishvili

Writer’s Name: Rati Adeishvili

Producer: Rati Adeishvili

Country of Origin: Georgia

Country of Filming: Georgia

Language:

Runtime: 7 minutes 30 seconds

Film Description:

The young architect is visited by an unexpected night muse.

Original Film Title: I ONLY like you

Director’s Name: Camille LANDRAUD

Writer’s Name: Camille LANDRAUD

Producer: Camille LANDRAUD, Camille LUX

Country of Origin: France

Country of Filming: France

Language: English

Runtime: 14 minutes 55 seconds

Film Description:

She crosses her ex at her new work after moving back in with her sick father. But Margaret is not out and she gets conflicted by going back to her or hiding the truth.

Original Film Title: To My Father

Director’s Name: Matúš Gálik

Writer’s Name: Matúš Gálik

Producer: Matúš Gálik

Country of Origin: Slovakia

Country of Filming: Slovakia

Language: Slovak

Runtime: 33 minutes 25 seconds

Film Description:

The film is a personal testimony about the relationship between a father and son who embark on a journey together. A journey through the family’s past, marked by various events, from divorce, to the departure of the father and grandfather from the family, to new marriages. Through intimate footage and poetic narration, we follow the protagonist as he tries to understand the past and come to terms with the present. Fragments of conversations, family archives, and scenes from the present reveal invisible tensions as well as moments of closeness. Everyday situations become starting points for discussions about past traumas. The film thus offers a deeper insight into family relationships that shape our identity despite their complexity. Ultimately, it is a story about forgiveness, acceptance, and the need to understand one’s origins in order to be able to move forward.

Original Film Title: Life Line

Director’s Name: Qi Sunlu

Writer’s Name: Qi Sunlu

Producer: Qi Sunlu, Juice, Sun Qianhui

Country of Origin: United Kingdom

Country of Filming: United Kingdom

Language: English

Runtime: 5 minutes 55 seconds

Film Description:

A girl dares to challenge the mighty waves, but during one surfing session, she is swept away by a towering wave. In the moment the wave collapses, time freezes—revealing a towering ghostly statue. The statue seems to embody her past, and memories flood in like a life flashing before her eyes. The girl surrenders to the ghost’s silent judgment, until it ultimately pushes her back into the real world.When she wakes up, she realizes that the ghost representing her past wasn’t there to make her suffer, but to offer a blessing—a quiet wish for her to keep moving forward in peace and safety.

Original Film Title: How Many Miles

Director’s Name: Soraya Alicia Mansur, Simon Mikhail Kieffer

Writer’s Name: Soraya Alicia Mansur, Simon Mikhail Kieffer

Producer: Ferdi van Sorge

Country of Origin: Netherlands

Country of Filming: Netherlands

Language: English

Runtime: 14 minutes 30 seconds

Film Description:

When 16-year-old Charlie’s older sister, Robin, doesn’t show up for their long-awaited concert, Charlie’s gut tells her something is terribly wrong. What starts as a small worry quickly escalates into a frantic search, leading Charlie to uncover devastating truths about Robin’s life that she never could have imagined.

Original Film Title: Give me your gaze

Director’s Name: Antoine Verin

Writer’s Name: Antoine Verin

Producer: Antoine Verin

Country of Origin: France

Country of Filming: France

Language: English, French

Runtime: 10 minutes

Film Description:

A young woman emerges from a nightmare, trembling, lost in the middle of a stretch of water within her bed. Her demons have chosen to torment her.
Her eyes, filled with distress, search for a gaze, a presence — someone who could soothe her pain and offer her answers.

Original Film Title: The Dead Of Three Villages

Director’s Name: Muhammed Kaya

Writer’s Name: Muhammed Kaya

Producer: Muhammed Kaya

Country of Origin: Türkiye

Country of Filming: Türkiye

Language: Kurdish

Runtime: 16 minutes 28 seconds

Film Description:

In the early 1900s, a 38-year-old man rode through the villages of Diyarbakır on horseback. He fell off his horse and died at a crossroads between three villages. Children who witnessed this immediately informed their elders. Scholars from three religions (a Muslim Kurdish mullah, an Armenian Christian priest, and a Yazidi Kurdish sheikh) began discussing the deceased’s religion in the village square, placing the deceased before them. The mullah, the sheikh, and the priest attempted to interpret the deceased’s death from their own perspective. The mulla attributed the dirty and worn knees to prayer, Sheikh Halit attributed the injury to the sun, and the priest attributed it to his morning prayers to God. The mullah suggested that the man had been circumcised. Taybet Ana, an elderly villager, requested that the deceased be taken to her home to have his circumcision performed there. The deceased was taken to the old woman’s house. The deceased, who was circumcised, was not Christian. The scholars of the three religions left the funeral to perform their religious duties. The mullah goes to perform ablution, but his arm hair is combed back. Noticing this, the mullah tells the religious scholars that the hair is combed back when performing ablution. Based on the mullah’s suggestion, the man is examined. This claim is deemed insufficient. Three religious scholars, having determined that the man was Muslim due to the stone mark on his forehead, send him to wash the body. While washing the body, Gassal turns it over and notices the hammer and sickle tattoo on its back, summoning the religious scholars again. The three religious scholars stare at the tattoo.