Nominated Films 2026
Archie & His Gang in: The Day of Atonement
Animation: Txesco Montalt a.o.
Direction & Text: Benjamin Hackmann
Canada 2026, 5:17 min
“On a stage somewhere stands
a lowly poet, sorting
out the modes by which
he is mourning still
his father, and three turtles awarded
to the poet as a boy
by his father for atoning
one Yom Kippur long long ago. Now
as history & guilt, and The History of Guilt, intermingle
on a stage somewhere, the poet
must wrestle with the extent
to which he and three turtles are responsible
for the events that unfolded at Treblinka.”
Kissing Loaves
Animation: Maï Borges Nilstam
Text: Maï Borges Nilstam & Djamila Borges
France 2026, 5:50 min
“Baisure” in French which I chose to translate as “Kissing Loaves” is the exact place where two loaves meet during baking. A specific zone of contact, where the crust is softer because it is less baked. This film explores this tiny yet rich point of junction, where an entire world is revealed. A meeting between two beings.
My mother is a baker and a writer. She wrote this poem, and I created images inspired by it, together, we combined our stories. This film is a collaboration between mother and daughter.”
Dear Cyborg
Franziska Ostermann & A.I.
Text: Franziska Ostermann & A.I.
Germany 2026, 5:16 min
In Dear Cyborg Franziska Ostermann intertwines poetry and AI-generated imagery to explore the intertwined histories of computers born from the loom and ultimately weaving techniques of insects, following a poetological poem that examines the position of the poem and generated images within this context.
While prompting synthetic self-portraits, a figure began to speak in the artist’s mind; her monologue becomes a poem. Verses turn into prompts, prompts into images—a circular process in which word and image continually bring each other into being.
Born from a desire to let poetry and imagery appear together, Ostermann merges writing, seeing, and algorithmic thinking. AI becomes the medium in which language turns into technology and text into textile material. The thread runs from silkworm to loom to computer—a genealogy in which the poem continues as living code.
The poet appears as a cyborg who writes with and through technology. Poetry here becomes an interface between body, system, and image—an organic, breathing network of neural prompts and living code.
Potatoes
Animation & Text: Klaus Hoefs
Germany 2024, 4:00 min
A boy grows up proudly on a traditional farm and is secretly in love with his best friend. Like many before her, she is getting married and moving to the big city of Berlin. For the wedding, she orders her bridal shoes from Amazon. The family gathers in the front yard, waiting for the delivery. The boy dreams of meeting her, dressed only in her bridal shoes, by the pigsty. Days later, she is long gone, and he waits for a bus to take him away from his old life. But the bus passes by, and he keeps waiting and waiting for the next one.
Onderweg
Animation & Text: Melody Sigmond
Netherlands 2025, 2:40 min
He says, don’t worry about tomorrow, the birds don’t either.
You know every turn. You’re asleep, but not fully. With every turn you know you’re getting closer to where you need to be.
I don’t think I’m ready to go without training wheels yet. Everything I am, is because of you.
With every turn you know you’re getting closer to where you need to be. The car comes to a stop. The radio is silent. Arms, carrying you. You’re asleep, but not fully.
Where will I live when I grow up?
I’m not sure if you’re still walking behind me. Or if maybe, secretly, you’ve already let go.
You’re asleep, but not fully. Slowly, step by step, carried up the stairs, because you’re not so little anymore. With every step, you feel you’re getting closer to what you need to be. You’re asleep now, completely.
1/1
Animation & Text: Huifang Tan
China 2025, 3:00 min
Gaps have an irresistible pull on me;
1 find myself returning to them again and again.
So I decided to enter the gap-to explore it from within.
It is a field of ambiguity: meaningless, unknown, undefined, unfinished.
It is empty, yet contains everything.
And within this state of indeterminacy, meaning quietly begins to take shape.
A gap is a trace. It is a statement made before discovering the answer-a moment of being in-between.
In this film, Huifang followed the vein of her conscious and unconscious mind, navigating between the known and the unknown, entering this gap and looking for the answer to existence.
So, what is inside a gap?
Perhaps vou will find vour answer,
or the answer will simply permeate into the ambiguous, misty air.
Marinating
Direction: Helmie Stil & Sjaan Flikweert
Text: Sjaan Flikweert
Netherlands 2026, 4:17 min
Marinating is a poem about the powerful vulnerability of opening your heart and your mind to another.
In this intimate description, two people surrender their brains, their own thoughts, to the other and allow themselves to be influenced. It is an equal act, in which they both yield. In the film we see the connection we have as a community, feeding each other with our stories and helping each other in the most vulnerable way.
Marinating is a loving resistance against the fear of the influence we can have on each other. A painful yet empowering reminder of our interdependence.
In-Between
Direction: Pedro Sena Nunes
Text: Jorge Listopad
Portugal 2025, 4:28 min
A visual essay on the intimate and ephemeral relationship between artist and viewer. A choreography of movements and glances in a living archive in constant transfiguration. A silent dialogue about the fragility and eternity of what we record and lose to the world. An introspective ode to memory and cinema.
My Body, a Snail Shell
Direction & Text: Jeanine Lang
Germany 2026 2,04 min
Two women between cacti and twitching fish. While one never stops talking, snails seal the other woman’s mouth. MY BODY, A SNAIL SHELL tells of the involuntary retreat into one’s own body, of the desire to be heard and the experience of losing oneself further and further in one’s shell until silence becomes an attribution: as emptiness, as consent, as insignificance. A visual essay about speechlessness, external attribution, and the struggle to free oneself from one’s own retreat.
Salt, Snow, Earth
Direction: Wendy Pye
Text: Naomi Foyle
UK 2025, 1:40 min
‘Salt, Snow, Earth’ is a defiant meditation on human violence. To Naomi Foyle’s terse recitation of her poem, director Wendy Pye delivers fast-paced splitscreen archival imagery of war, genocide, protest and environmental devastation, interspersed with footage of aggressive hand signs, including the title in British Sign Language. Deftly edited in jump cuts and superimpositions to the jittery rhythms of Razia Aziz’s percussive soundtrack and punctuating sighs, ‘Salt, Snow, Earth’ asks who ultimately benefits from humanity’s incessant carousel of global militarism, imperialism and ecocide.
This House
Animation: Tse Yu Lin
Text: Yu Ling
Taiwan 2025, 2:28 min
This film adapts This House, a poem by acclaimed poet Ling Yu, drawing on the intimate, slightly whimsical experience of moving into a new home. Set in a renovated old bungalow on the outskirts of Taipei, the film unfolds from afternoon into night. Through subtle encounters between the character and the space, everyday gestures gradually give way to moments of imagination. By incorporating elements of poetry collections and melodic chanting, the images do not illustrate the poem so much as extend it—opening the text into a layered, cinematic way of reading.
Good Girl
Direction: Matthew Thompson
Text: Kim Addonizio
UK 2024, 3:57 min
Actress Sidonie McLaren performs “Good Girl,” Kim Addonizio’s poem of female rebellion, while between swims at the pool.
Walking & Wandering
Direction: ARIS Collective, Tracey Fearnehough, Holger Mohaupt
Text: W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)
UK 2025, 5:50 min
Completing 20 miles a day was often tough but “dreams,
memories and words just go round and round my head to keep me
going” (Max).
This documentary poem by the Scottish ARIS Collective, is part of
a film about long distance walking on the North East coast of
Scotland.
“We met 77-year-old Max walking along the A9 near Inverness on
his way down to Lands’ End, completing a 1200-mile charity walk
to raise funds for the charity, Médecins sans Frontières and their
Gaza appeal. He said that he preferred to walk alone but poetry
kept him company.
In this film, Max recites the poem “The Song of Wandering
Aengus” by the Irish writer W.B. Yeats. Yeats later said that “the
poem was suggested to me by a Greek folk song; but the folk
belief of Greece is very like that of Ireland, and I certainly thought,
when I wrote it, of Ireland, and of the spirits that are in Ireland.
A story of inspiration and contemplation which brings together the
passion for walking with the poetry of life.”
Abjad Hawaz (أبجد هوز)
Direction & Text: Hadi Moussally
Lebanon, 05:00 min
Abjad Ḥawaz (أبجد هوز) takes its name from the ancient ordering of the Arabic alphabet. Through the body of Salma Zahore, each letter is danced and embodied in the ruins ofBarcelona. Blending fashion, music, poetry, and performance, the film reclaims a languageoften feared and misunderstood, turning it into a celebration of identity, resilience, andartistic freedom.
