Short Form, Big Impact: Announcing the 2025 Short of the Year Award Winners

The wait is over. After weeks of anticipation, thousands of audience votes, and thoughtful deliberation from our jury, we are thrilled to unveil the winners of the Short of the Year Awards 2025.

This year’s edition brought together an extraordinary lineup of short films and documentaries from across the globe, each pushing the boundaries of what short-form storytelling can achieve. From intimate character studies to bold genre experiments, the 2025 contenders showcased remarkable vision, craft, and emotional depth.

Choosing winners from such a strong field was anything but easy. Today, we celebrate the projects and creators that rose to the top and left a lasting impression on our team and audiences alike.

Here are your Short of the Year Awards 2025 winners:

• Best Documentary – Densho
• Best Direction – Aicha
• Best Cinematography – ⁠I’m Not a Robot
• Best Editing – ⁠The Axe Forgets
• Best Music – ⁠Aicha
• Best Screenplay – ⁠Strays
• Best Short Film – I’m Not a Robot
• Audience Choice Awards Winner – iHunt: Loose Threads (888 Votes)

A huge congratulations to all the winners. Your films are a testament to the power of the medium: the ability to move us in minutes, to spark conversations that last far longer, and to prove that scope is no limit to impact. Your dedication, craft, and originality have earned a place in the Short of the Year hall of fame, standing alongside an incredible legacy of past winners.

To every nominee and every filmmaker who submitted this year: your work matters. Being part of this lineup means your film resonated with our editors, programmers, and audiences—please keep creating, experimenting, and telling the stories only you can tell.

Looking Ahead to 2026. As we celebrate this year’s achievements, we are also looking towards the future growth of the festival. We are committed to evolving alongside the dynamic landscape of independent filmmaking.

As we close out this edition, we’re excited to continue championing bold, diverse, and fearless short films from around the world. Here’s to another year of unforgettable shorts, new voices, and stories that stay with us long after the credits roll.