Find the winners, runners up and honourable mentions for 2026 below. Congratulations everyone!
[Find the shortlists here.]
FEATURE
Winner
11 Underground, (Arturo Delgado Pereira - aka Chico Pereira)
Panel comments:
"A polished, methodical, and assured documentary, whose central idea leads to a fascinating scenario in which the artistic ‘re-enactment’ of a previous miner’s strike inadvertently creates a swell of collective protest and emotion from the population of Almadén. An incredible story, rooted in protest of the past, becomes a ray of light and hope in changing the future. As an artistic and anthropological experiment, the scenario is rich and insightful, with a keen and deliberate eye for cinematography and editing forming the foundation for a cohesive narrative."
"A polished, methodical, and assured documentary, whose central idea leads to a fascinating scenario in which the artistic ‘re-enactment’ of a previous miner’s strike inadvertently creates a swell of collective protest and emotion from the population of Almadén. An incredible story, rooted in protest of the past, becomes a ray of light and hope in changing the future. As an artistic and anthropological experiment, the scenario is rich and insightful, with a keen and deliberate eye for cinematography and editing forming the foundation for a cohesive narrative."
Runner-upA Mixtape for Stom, (Adrian Goycoolea)
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Honourable mentionExit Medea, (Tony Paraskeva)
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Panel comments:
"A kinetic, sensitive, and highly personal documentary. The film oscillates continuously between being sweet, abrasive, contemplative, critical, insightful, and unknowable – and in doing so formally enacts the ‘mixtape’ quality of its title. The film’s subject is presented as being full of contradictions and nuance, and the construction of the documentary creates a tactile, haptic embodiment of him – a viewing experience that feels tangible, which is at times deeply uncomfortable." |
Panel comments:
"An impressively ambitious film that offers a reframing of the Greek myth of Medea by positioning her brother Aspyrtus as being an integral character in the tragic narrative. Utilising tropes of Giallo horror in its use of colour, visceral gore, and mannered performances, along with elements of film noir the road movie, it offers an insightful reimagining of a well-established and oft-depicted myth that also explores fiction filmmaking’s potential as practice-research." |
SHORT
Winner
Transforming Voices (Miguel Gaggiotti)
Panel comments:
"A conceptually and creatively elegant co-authored practice-led response to and exploration of gender discrimination and vulnerability in the USA-Mexico borderland. The project’s novel approach to participatory methodology and collaborative authorship is rigorously theorised and integral to the project’s endeavour. The film is a great example of innovative and complex collaborations with a strong grounding in ethics and social justice."
"A conceptually and creatively elegant co-authored practice-led response to and exploration of gender discrimination and vulnerability in the USA-Mexico borderland. The project’s novel approach to participatory methodology and collaborative authorship is rigorously theorised and integral to the project’s endeavour. The film is a great example of innovative and complex collaborations with a strong grounding in ethics and social justice."
Runner-upThe Staircase (Vron Harris)
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Honourable mentionNotes from Brook House (Alex Nevill)
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Panel comments:
"A conceptually robust and inventive approach to practice-led research, examining the relationship between performance and reality, testing the boundaries of performance to evoke internal, often conflicting dichotomies of emotion, identity and ambition. The construct of audience as simultaneously viewer of the film and casting director in a concurrently invented/real scenario is one of a series of intriguing fluctuating reflexivities, provoking questions and revelations through the journey of the film’s looping narrative. The lighting, staging and composition all contribute to the investigation into performance techniques." |
Panel comments:
"The film provocatively counterpoints narratives of place, identity, belonging and tensions of voice to explore the UK’s borders in relation to experiences of and attitudes to migrancy.. The film is beautifully shot, and the meditative structure contrasts wonderfully with the oft aggressive and confrontational discourse which permeates the topic of immigration. An orchestrated approach to diegetic sound elevates the film’s soundscape, underscoring senses of control in both migrant experience and UK borderscapes It’s a fine example of politically engaged filmmaking, which challenges the dominant visual language of the form." |
VIDEOGRAPHIC CRITICISM
Winner
The Anthropocene Will Eat Itself (Cormac Donnelly)
Panel comments:
"This essay shows a clear confidence and economy with which it makes its argument — a bold and tightly constructed videographic essay that uses the trailer format to explore extinction and the Anthropocene with real clarity and punch. What distinguishes it is the deliberateness of its aesthetic choices: every formal decision serves the argument, delivering a conceptually focused and memorable piece without overcomplicating the form. It demonstrates exactly what strong videographic work can achieve."
"This essay shows a clear confidence and economy with which it makes its argument — a bold and tightly constructed videographic essay that uses the trailer format to explore extinction and the Anthropocene with real clarity and punch. What distinguishes it is the deliberateness of its aesthetic choices: every formal decision serves the argument, delivering a conceptually focused and memorable piece without overcomplicating the form. It demonstrates exactly what strong videographic work can achieve."
Runner-upMany Cantonas (David Martin-Jones)
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Honourable mentionMaking Fiction Flow (Melanie Bell & Catherine Grant)
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Panel comments:
"A clear and well-grounded exploration of mental health and working-class masculinity in Looking for Eric. Its structured, explanatory approach makes the argument consistently easy to follow, with solid theoretical grounding throughout." |
Panel comments:
"Recognised for bringing the often unseen work of script supervision into thoughtful and engaging focus by weaving oral history with film clips. The multiscreen approach is well-chosen and effectively reflects the complexity of the role, earning its commendation for the feminist attentiveness of its approach — though clearer naming or on-screen referencing of the films discussed would have strengthened its scholarly framing further." |
DOCTORAL AWARD
Winner
Networked Narratives (Godswill Okwuchukwu Ezeonyeka)
Panel comments:
"A highly original documentary narrative, delivered through a fully functioning online platform, this creative practice output clearly demonstrates the creative rigour that has gone into developing a sophisticated interactive documentary whose easy accessible interface will allow audiences to engage with the project’s source material in innovative and profoundly engaging ways, leading to significant potential impacts on how audiences may participate in activism."
"A highly original documentary narrative, delivered through a fully functioning online platform, this creative practice output clearly demonstrates the creative rigour that has gone into developing a sophisticated interactive documentary whose easy accessible interface will allow audiences to engage with the project’s source material in innovative and profoundly engaging ways, leading to significant potential impacts on how audiences may participate in activism."
Runner-upAda, or (Tijana Mamula)
Panel comments:
"Deeply personal yet intellectually expansive, Ada’s oblique narrative, fragmentation, and precise audiovisual composition allow inherited trauma to be felt rather than explained. By transforming intimate testimony into a critical cinematic method, the project demonstrates how the personal can generate new theoretical and formal pathways for contemporary narrative and practice-based film research." |
Honourable mentionRehearsing the Fall (Wanzhou Xiao)
Panel comments:
"This innovative and well crafted video essay rigorously explores how the depiction of falling in American films changed as a consequence of falling imagery related to 9/11 and, in so doing, the essay presents us with a new and original vision of how the video essay, as a practice form, can help us understand American society and culture in significantly new ways through the lens of practice led cinema analysis." |
Awards vector designed by Pramote Lertnitivanit (vecteezy.com)