JURY DECLARATION:

Awarded for its intrinsic, almost magical poetry, "Opera" is a static yet dynamic one-picture show, like a painting coming to life. The most cinephilic of all the films shown, it invites us to immerse ourselves in a carefully framed atmosphere of light and shadow, the very essence of photography and cinema itself.

JURY DECLARATION:

Awarded for its first hand, cinematic, and high quality immersion into the thematics of sexual identity, social dynamics and the oppression of the queer movement in China - including means of censorship, surveillance and intimidation.

JURY DECLARATION:

If we didn't read the sinopsis first, we express our first suspicions by searching for six fingers on the actors. What looked like an interview to the past appears to be born seamless from old photos and evolving with a strange retro feeling. Even so, the creative process shown appears akin to many creators primed to aesthetic and show effect, full of absurdities and surrealism... so much, it may be human. If not, it is shocking to see actors, cued to the whims of a director AI performing instantly its inanities, a reversal of roles... unless the actors were also AI made. The redemption came with the credits when the use of an AI trained to be Eleanora Derenkovskaya aka Maya Deren is disclosed. There's a proper irony here, because the celebrated vanguardist film-maker (died in 1961, and first great retrospective of 2026 at Cinemateca Portuguesa) was obsessed with the Voodoo religion and here we have another filmmaker trying to induce a possession of an AI by her spirit. For these adventures of the mind and much more, we award the night's award to "Organising Principles of Experience".

JURY DECLARATION:

"DeadEye" is awarded the Edward Snowden Award for its implicit premise: There has been mass mortality of sea life related to climate change. The authors use the brutal results of one of those episodes to create a mesmerizing scenario to tell their story. There is where it transcends. Using the eyes of dead fishes as background, we are reminded that what we perceive is a function of context and environment. Fishes do not see the stars in the sky... pure physics and biology but also a metaphor for all the different points of view brewed from different surroundings, environments, attitudes, upbringings, dynamics... allegedly the root of many misunderstandings and conflicts in the human world. That is an even greater reason to award it the Edward Snowden Award.

DIRECTOR STATEMENT:

Now, 12 months on from the worst phases of the harmful algal bloom that devastated marine life in South Australia, the coastal waters are no longer toxic. But the effects of the bloom continue, with many once common species still missing from the ecosystem. However, other species are beginning to rebound where opportunities exist. No one knows if the bloom will return this summer. Regardless, the message from the fish in DEADEYE remains: we must do everything in our power to prevent further environmental catastrophes from destroying the world that we depend upon.

JURY DECLARATION:

Awarded for its mesmerizing points of view of a natural spectacle that, without words and in a brilliant manner, negotiates the relationship between Nature and humans. The highly artistic capture reflects the perpetuality of this relationship in an everlasting interplay of the four elements of earth, water, air (wind), and fire (smoke), particularly highlighting the constrasts between silence and noise, as well as between dynamical motion and rest.