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The awards ceremony for this edition took place on 6th June at 9.30pm in the Passos Manuel hall. The short films awarded in four categories were announced: EAST WAVE AWARD for Best Fiction Film, EAST DOC AWARD for Best Documentary, experimentalEAST AWARD for Best Experimental Film and ANIMA EAST AWARD for Best Animated Film.
EAST WAVE — Best Fiction Award
Upon Sunrise, by Stefan Ivančić | HR, SRB, SLO, ES | 2025
“This story presents itself as a short film of remarkable formal maturity and narrative density, articulating a sharp social reflection through an intimate exploration of economic vulnerability, single motherhood, and everyday strategies of survival. Its originality does not necessarily lie in thematic novelty, but rather in its ability to condense a complex social experience into a short duration, endowing it with dramatic depth, political relevance, and significant human impact. With considerable sensitivity, the film brings into focus the existential dilemmas of a society marked by precarity, communal fragmentation, and persistent forms of exclusion in the post–Iron Curtain context. The narrative avoids excessive exposition and instead privileges a restrained yet emotionally effective construction, allowing the social dimension to emerge through concrete situations, gestures, and the everyday tensions experienced by the characters. In this way, Upon Sunrise establishes itself as a solid, humanly resonant, and narratively significant work, capable of transforming a specific social condition into a broader reflection on dignity, care, and resistance.”
EAST WAVE — Jury Mention
Slush, by Aivars Šaicāns, Jēkabs Okonovs | LV | 2026
“From the first seconds the film takes you forcefully by the hand and drags you along whether you want to or not through its elliptical editing, spontaneous acting and a loose story that focuses less on the narrative and more on the life in front of the camera. A day that passes by for two strangers that unexpectedly become some sort of friends and are drawn to each other with no explanation, just the simple magnetism that sometimes makes you connect to a stranger. The energy of the film (similar a bit with a Safdie brothers film) is unrelentless and appears to be skimming through the evanescence of a day going by but in spite of the speed and celerity manages to make you care about the characters and brings them close to you in a very subtle and unexpected way.”
EAST DOC — Best Documentary Award
Bad Poles, by Kamila Ćwiklińśka | PL | 2024
“We selected a documentary that, despite dealing with a story so compelling and difficult to look away from, ultimately distinguishes itself through the remarkable power of a revealing conversation between two individuals.
Recognition goes to its editing, color grading, and sound design, all of which contribute to a narrative that is at once light, melodramatic, and unexpectedly humorous, at times approaching the tone of a mockumentary. While the film is essential for the reality it documents, its documentary strength emerges from the originality of its core: the subtle and poetic dialogue between its two central protagonists.
Through their exchange, the film succeeds in addressing broader social and political realities through intimate personal experience, exploring the complexities faced by the queer and LGBTQ+ community within the Polish context. By moving from the micro to the macro, it transforms a personal conversation into a profound reflection on identity, belonging, and collective struggle.”
EAST DOC — Jury Mention
White Cliffs of Vinnytsia, by Karolina Uskakovych | UA | 2026
“Our Honourable Mention offers a documentary and essayistic proposal of considerable aesthetic, political, and ecological relevance, transforming a contaminated industrial landscape into an object of reflection on memory, environmental degradation, and unexpected forms of survival. The film’s strength lies in its ability to redirect the viewer’s gaze towards a seemingly residual space, converting it into a territory of historical inscription, ecological tension, and resistance. The documentary argument is particularly compelling in the way it links the history of agricultural chemical production with the unforeseen emergence of animal and plant life in an environment marked by toxicity and abandonment. In this sense, White Cliffs of Vinnytsia succeeds in combining documentary observation, environmental reflection, and historical interpretation in a sensitive discourse on devastation, material memory, and the persistence of life.”
experimentalEAST — Best Experimental Film Award
Dragica, Danica, Duška / or / when Zora, the goddess of Dawn, opens the gates of Heaven for Sun to emerge, by Iva Radivojević | USA, XK | 2025
“The winner of this category asserts itself as an essayistic work of considerable narrative sophistication, constructing a subtle dialogue between cosmology, intimate memory, and female experience. The film does not employ myth merely as a cultural reference, but rather as a structure of thought: the figure of Zora, drawn from Slavic mythology, makes it possible to reorganise everyday life, affective relations, and family inheritance within a broader temporality in which past, present, and symbolic imagination interpenetrate. The strength of the work lies in its ability to transform female genealogy into a space for sensitive reflection on transmission, care, resistance, and continuity. The figures evoked emerge not simply as characters or individual memories, but as presences that sustain a meditation on the place of women in the preservation of bonds, gestures, and family narratives. The film stands out for the maturity with which it transforms personal memory into cinematic material.”
experimentalEAST — Jury Mention
Does the Sea Have a Heart?, by Miglė Križinauskaitė | HU | 2025
“It is a brief artwork, conceived as a visual poem centred on the sea, human absence, and the sensitive memory of places. Its narrative power does not lie in a conventional dramatic progression, but in its ability to turn the seascape into a space of affective, symbolic, and almost metaphysical inquiry. The question inscribed in the film’s title guides its reading: the sea ceases to be mere setting and becomes a presence—body, archive, and a surface for emotional projection.”
ANIMA EAST — Best Animation Award
The Pool or Death of a Goldfish, by Daria Kopiec | PL | 2025
“Animation may appear to be the ideal medium for escaping reality, yet it often serves as a pathway toward its deepest truths.
Through a compelling blend of estrangement, melancholy, delirium, and vibrant storytelling, the winner of Anima East 2026 reveals itself as an extraordinary work that transcends its remarkable technical and formal achievements. Distinguished by its exceptional character design, color palette, and sound design, this 13-minute short film succeeds in anchoring the sensitive matter of grief within the surreal terrain of memory and dreams, layering fiction and reality into a profoundly affecting cinematic experience.
The First Prize is awarded to The Pool or Death of a Goldfish, directed by Daria Kopiec.”
ANIMA EAST — Jury Mention
Amarelo Banana, by Alexandre Sousa | PT, HU | 2025
“This Honourable Mention recognizes, among an outstanding selection of animated works presented at BEAST 2026, a film whose narrative surprised us through its transgressive exploration of dreams and insomnia. Supported by striking visual design, atmospheric settings, and an outstanding soundscape, the film constructs a powerful and enigmatic relationship between ourselves and the Other.
Beginning from the domestic space of the home, it unveils the fantasies we project onto others through a ritualistic allegory of a sleepwalking encounter with neighboring lives. By invoking catharsis through ritual, the film exposes and destabilizes the structures of Western social hegemony, revealing how order often functions to conceal underlying states of delirium and desire.
The Honourable Mention is awarded to the Hungarian Portuguese production Amarelo Banana, directed by Alexandre Sousa.”
