JURY DECLARATION

The film plays out like a theatrical play, transforming an ordinary space into a dramatic dreamland through the control of a single light. Despite this simple execution, though it looks complicated to pull off, the film offers a unique experience between cinema and theatre, revealing the nature and limitations of both, and showing us how fragile reality can be, especially in cinema.

DIRECTOR STATEMENT

I was very happy to read the jury’s statement, especially the idea of the fragility of reality in cinema. For me, this fragility concerns not only the image, but also the viewer and the act of perception. Opera was conceived as an attempt to make us aware of how easily our perception can be guided, and how quickly we can accept a constructed image as reality. I also find the connection between cinema and theatre very interesting. The film began as an attempt to reconstruct a living world within a real abandoned space, but I gradually realized that such a reconstruction could only ever consist of fragments of a life that no longer exists.
I am very grateful to the jury for recognizing these ideas in the film, and especially for the Main Award. It means a lot to me.

JURY DECLARATION

With a deceptively simple approach—focusing on the silent gaze of dead fish and concluding with an inventory of species in the end credits—the film delivers a quiet yet profound warning. This poetic short transforms a minimalistic study of aquatic life into a striking meditation on local ecological collapse and the global environmental crisis.

DIRECTOR STATEMENT

Thank you to the jury for their insightful comments on my video. The harmful algal bloom in South Australia has mostly passed for now. However, the damage to coastal ecosystems and the massive loss of marine life warn us not to ignore the long-lasting consequences of anthropogenic climate change.

JURY DECLARATION

A masterful record of rural Japanese rice cultivation, this short film beautifully captures the care and harmony sustained by those who tend the land. Through remarkably crisp imagery, precise editing, and the symbolic use of bell tones, the film invites the audience to contemplate the complex dualities between nature and humanity, the natural and the artificial, and the wild and the cultivated.

JURY DECLARATION

Yearning for the past in order to look toward the future, the filmmaker traces the history of queer activism in China combined with footage of a play rehearsal, which serves as a kind of life under surveillance. It may be a sad kind of poem, looking at things that no longer exist, yet life goes on, the journey continues, and the fight will never end.

JURY DECLARATION

Creating movies using AI feels legitimized when the intent is to question the technology itself, rather than indulging in sterile visual fantasies and deluding oneself into calling them complete. The film constructs an AI model of Maya Deren—one of the world's most influential avant-garde filmmakers—and co-writes a plot alongside her. In just 13 minutes, it raises profound questions regarding the limits and boundaries of AI: How truly innovative and superior is relying on AI for creativity? How accurately does the programmed AI capture Deren's vision, character, and capability? And is borrowing the identity of a deceased director ethical or legal in terms of copyright? While the filmmaker likely has their own conclusions, the answer ultimately lies in how the audience interprets what unfolds on screen.