IFFBoston 2026 Award Winners
Narrative Features
Grand Jury Prize
FILIPIÑANA Directed by Rafael Manuel
Jury Statement: The narrative feature winner FILIPIÑANA does everything perfectly, from the opening images it begins to frame its indictment of capitalism and classism and never lets up frame by frame until the final image. The use of sound, color, and mise-en-scene are truly a marvel.
Special Jury Prize
BLUE HERON Directed by Sophy Romvari
Jury Statement: The jury also commends BLUE HERON, a beautiful slow drama with clever, subtle pacing and photography (especially of Vancouver Island). It is clearly a very personal film and done with a lot of care.
Audience Award
AS I AM Directed by Pourya Azarbayjani Dow
Documentary Features
Grand Jury Prize
SCHOOL FOR DEFECTORS Directed by Jeremy Workman
Jury Statement: At the Jangdahyun School (JDH) in Busan, South Korea, the students are children of those who, enduring extraordinary hardships and risk, have escaped North Korea. Through emotionally compelling interviews the students conduct with the adults in their lives, we see how these children bear not only the weight of their origin but also the stigma of being “defectors.” Thus the audience learns, along with the film’s subjects, about the intergenerational repercussions of this lasting political division. This beautiful film shows us how a small school like JDH encourages these students, through a broad pedagogy, to find their own worth, to blossom and thrive, and—possibly for the first time—to imagine they have a future.
Special Jury Prize
AANIKOOBIJIGAN [ANCESTOR/GREAT-GRANDPARENT/GREAT-GRANDCHILD] Directed by Adam Khalil & Zack Khalil
Jury Statement: The efforts of members of Native tribal alliances (particularly MACPRA), legalized by the NAGPRA Act, to repatriate ancestors’ remains — a spiritually profound endeavor against racist and colonial plunder and biased “preservation” — meet both successes and institutional resistances over many years. The ancestors themselves, imprisoned in archives and museums and yet connected to the land and water of Mother Earth and to the spiral ebbs of Time, are granted representation through passages of experimental visual technique.
Karen Schmeer Excellence in Film Editing Award
LEAVING ANGOLA Edited by Tim Raycroft
Jury Statement: At Angola prison in Louisiana, efforts to reduce both the numbers of prisoners and the rate of recidivism include re-entry training, with work, education and mentorship being conducted by fellow inmates sentenced to life without parole. Following a mentor and one of his mentees over several years, Leaving Angola documents the bittersweetness of fostering the capacity for a freedom the mentor may never enjoy, the pressures of the world outside the prison walls, the slow-turning wheels of justice, and the vicissitudes of life. The intertwining of the protagonists’ stories, and the surprising ways in which their stories converge and diverge over many years, expertly illuminates themes of redemption and rehabilitation within the broader context of the prison industrial complex.
Audience Award
LEAVING ANGOLA Directed by Andrew Kukura
Narrative Shorts
Grand Jury Prize
FAMILY SUNDAY Directed by Gerardo Del Razo
Jury Statement: A beautifully shot, pitch perfect portrait of gritty crime, violence and redemption all in one hour within 10 minutes. Paced like a Kubrick film and portrayed like Scorsese would.
Special Jury Prize
THE SPANISH LESSON Directed by Simone Stadler
Jury Statement: Reminiscent of a 90’s indie flick, THE SPANISH LESSON rings true for the everyday ups and downs of life that we all share with one another other. The heartache. The let downs and the moments of connection we didn’t expect. Pitch perfect acting is the backbone of a story between strangers who have more in common than they expected.
Audience Award
FAMILY SUNDAY Directed by Gerardo Del Razo
Documentary Shorts
Grand Jury Prize
GATORVILLE Directed by Freddie Gluck
Jury Statement: We’re dropped right into the tire pit in astonishing color and light in this film. The incredibly unique setting is rendered completely usual by the sweet and precocious brother and sister duo who share their contemplations on growing up in a place most people would consider extreme, and what it might mean to leave it all behind one day.
Special Jury Prize
A DERAILMENT Directed by Nathan Truesdell
Jury Statement: News footage from the East Palestine Ohio Norfolk Southern train derailment, which occurred in 2023, is finally set to an appropriately rageful score in this short. We are led through the slog of a deeply unjust and not so unfamiliar story of the toxic wake of capital in America. It’s a reminder to all of us, that this place is truly and maybe irrevocably fucked, and a lesson to never trust the officials who won’t breathe the same air, or drink the same water as you.
Audience Award
MAKE A JOYFUL NOISE Directed by Alice Stone
Jurors
Narrative Features
Amy Monaghan ia a writer and editor of Sofia Coppola: Interviews.
Jay Morong is a Senior Lecturer of Theatre and Film at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, the Creative Director of The Independent Picture House and the Director of Programming & Exhibition for the Charlotte Film Festival.
Documentary Features
Chandra Hodgson is an English Professor at Humber Polytechnic in Toronto, where she teaches a course in documentary for Film and Television Production students.
Will Lautzenheiser was a filmmaker and teacher of film production and screenwriting whose story (of infection, amputation, and transplantation) was chronicled in Robin Berghaus’s film STUMPED, which opened IFFBoston 2017.
Short Films
Cheyenne Harvey works for Emerson College as the manager of the Bright Family Screening Room as well as the rehearsal Studios in the Paramount Center.
Mark Phinney is the writer/director of the film FEAR OF FLYING, which won the Audience Award at IFFBoston 2024.
