2026 H1
Awards Winners
Announcement


Best Narrative Short: The Ashes
Best Documentary: Struggling to Slack
Best Experimental Film: Not Awarded
Best AI Film: Céremony
Best Genre Film: Not Awarded
Best Music Video: Not Awarded
Best Student Film: Chicken Run
Best Screenplay: Kicking Toward Tomorrow!
Best Director: Short of Breath
Best Cinematography: The Ashes
Best Editing: A Million Ways to Return Home
Best Actor: CHIKUWACCHA!!

Award Winners
Online Screening

Limited-Time Schedule
30 JUNE — 2 JULY

※ Please note that all films will be automatically removed from the online screening platform after the screening period ends.

WATCH NOW

Final Jury Statement

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Best Narrative Short
Best Cinematography
The Ashes
- Qinglong LIU

While grounded in the rough, unadorned realism of post-socialist landscapes associated with Jia Zhangke, the film achieves a cool, refined lyricism reminiscent of Paweł Pawlikowski’s <Ida> and <Cold War>. Rather than sentimentally tracking the character’s suffering, the camera formalizes the relationship between desolate landscapes and the figure through deep focus, allowing space itself to bear witness to history and psychology.

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Best AI Film
Céremony
- Mark Wachholz

A film that presents the aesthetic and ethical frontier currently attainable in AI cinema. Its greatness lies in an auteurist insight that reverses the instrumental constraint of “limitations on the depiction of real child actors” into a thematic inquiry into the aesthetic capture and desensitization of suffering. The hybrid workflow—combining live-action textures with AI-generated animated faces—creates a peculiar aesthetic tension alongside a meta-critical message.

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Best Student Film
Chicken Run
- Sang Feel Yook

A spirited film that transcends the constraints of a university project through bold budgeting and technical experimentation, rendering the defeatism of Korea’s younger generation through a form of magical realism. While the layers dealing with narrative causality and inner turmoil remain somewhat conventional, the work is highly commendable for its experimental spirit—distinctive of student cinema—and its directorial ambition to break through tragic reality through the paradox of comedic imagery.

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Best Documentary
Struggling to Slack
- Yanyan Qi

A documentary that disrupts the habitual social tendency to dismiss the helplessness and confusion of the younger generation as merely a “process of growth” or a “rite of passage.” By dedicating a long period to capturing the protagonist’s struggle, it offers a moment of reflection on how easily society standardizes and neglects individual failure.

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Best Editing
A Million Ways to Return Home
- Peter Lim

While it is difficult to shake the impression that the film is overly explicit, it nonetheless succeeds in evoking emotional resonance through its use of transitions between cuts and the interplay of sound.

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Best Screenplay
Kicking Toward Tomorrow!
- Yunbin AN

The film demonstrates a strong narrative design in framing the world of sports that the protagonist, Dongchan, encounters not as mere play or recreation, but as the only arena in which he can prove his existence. While the narrative remains somewhat on the surface and does not fully delve into the character’s depths, it is commendable for the density of its dialogue and the effective arrangement of dramatic devices that heighten conflict.

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Best Actor
CHIKUWACCHA!!
- Takumi II

The film’s protagonist moves beyond performance, proving a complete sense of “presence” before the camera. This energy of presence blends with the film’s gentle, positive tone, disarming the audience.

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Best Director
Short of Breath
- François Goglin

A film distinguished by its directorial control over fragmented moments, rhythms of breath, and emotional negative space. However, the accumulation of unexplained ellipses fails to fill the gaps in the narrative, instead hindering the audience’s active interpretation. It serves as a reminder of a cinematic paradox: what is left unsaid does not necessarily become what is felt.

Acceptance Video

Best Student Film

Best Screenplay

Best Director

Best Actor

Best Editing

Best AI Film

Final Jury

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Dean and Professor, Department of Theatre and Film, Hanyang University
Former Professor, Department of Film & Video, Yong In University

Short Films
Mask (1986) – Bronze Prize, 1st MBC University Film Contest
My Friend, Now It’s Your Turn to Speak (1989) – Grand Prize and Best Director Award, 7th Korean Creative Short Film Festival (now Busan International Short Film Festival)
Into the River (1995) – Best Director Award, 12th Golden Crown Short Film Festival (now Seoul Independent Film Festival)
Behind the Camel (1997) – Jury Special Prize, 2nd Seoul Short Film Festival

Feature Films
Kkangsoon, a Sure Products Worker – VHS Labor Documentary
Mother, Your Son – 16mm Narrative Feature
Rush – 35mm Narrative Feature
Official Selection: Hong Kong International Film Festival
Official Selection: Vancouver International Film Festival
Official Selection: Mannheim-Heidelberg International Film Festival

Sang-In Lee
• Honorary Festival President
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Professor, Department of Theatre and Film,
Hanyang University

Former Head of Producing Program, Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA)

Former Head of Film Division, CJ Entertainment; also served as Head of Marketing, Strategic Planning, and Content Research

Planned and produced Masquerade
(Gwanghae: The Man Who Became King)

Jong-Chul Gil

• Honorary Festival President
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Adjunct Professor, Department of Theater and Film,
Hanyang University

Short Films
Grand Prize Winner, 5.18 Short Film Festival 2021 (The Bat)
Director/Writer/Cinematographer,

Feature Film
Those Were the Good Days (2022)
Best Feature Film Award, 2024 Hong Kong Independent Film Festival

Hong-Rae Lee
• Jury
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Director at Dalligi Films Production
CEO, Hwa Mok Film Company

Lecturer at Pusan National University
Lecturer at Korea University of Media Arts
Adjunct Professor, Department of Theater and Film, Hanyang University

Feature Film
2023: Directed/Wrote feature film
Elements of Hopelessness
2021: Directed/Wrote feature film
Hope

Weon-Young Lee
• Jury
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CEO, AfterSSOT Production

Director, Screenwriter

Lecturer at Soongeui Women’s College
Adjunct Professor, Hanyang University

Yeon-Chul Lee
• Jury

Preliminary Jury

Sea-Hoon Jeon
Kang-Ryeong Lee
Jin-Yong Seung
Jeong-Hyo Moon

Dream • Create • Inspire
From idea to reality • Start small
Be fearless • Start now!

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