Student Competition 4

1. DARK OUTSIDE / IL BUIO FUORI 07:53 2026
   

   Directed:	Mario Pieri, Elena Cauzzi, Ida Cusinato
   Screenplay:	Mario Pieri
   Production:	Chiara Magri, Laura Fiori
   Dialogue Language:	No Dialogue

   
   

   Monica is an ethologist and lives with her partner in a ultra-modern house on the forest edge. He works in the city, she works at home, where every day she studies the footage recorded by video traps placed in the woods. Both live in the silent awareness of a relationship that has run its course. One night Monica wakes up from a nightmare and, for no apparent reason, goes to the computer to watch and rewatch those videos. The animals, glowing in the night, seem to be watching her.

2. The spider / Паук 04:23 Russian Federation 2026
   

   Directed:	Valeriia Sobolevski
   Screenplay:	Valeriia Sobolevski
   Production:	Iuliia Kalashnikova
   Dialogue Language:	Russian

   
   

   What happens when a tiny spider crawls into the house...

3. WING IT! 02:30 2025
   

   Directed:	Başak Bali, Deniz Tunçdibek
   Dialogue Language:	English

   
   

   Bir sinek, her seferinde ölümün kıyısından dönerken; raketlerden, parfümlerden ve çatal darbelerinden kurtulmayı başarır. Hayat gözlerinin önünden geçer, ama kaderin son şakası kaçınılmazdır. A fly narrowly escapes death time after time—dodging rackets, perfumes, and fork strikes. Its life flashes before its eyes, yet the final twist of fate is inevitable.

4. The sign of Power 12:16 2024
   

   Directed:	Šarlota Ema Horáčková
   Screenplay:	Šarlota Ema Horáčková
   Production:	Barbora Lehotská
   Dialogue Language:	Czech, Slovak

   
   

   A political prisoner fighting against the red power through the memories of his dead daughter and their botanical journal, trying to keep his own sanity and hope.

5. Pigment / Pigmento 03:52 2025
   

   Directed:	Benjamín Correa, Javiera Correa, Antonia Álvarez, Hector Schmidt
   Screenplay:	Benjamín Correa, Javiera Rivera, Antonia Álvarez
   Production:	Javiera Rivera
   Dialogue Language:	Spanish

   
   

   Trapped in his grief over his wife’s death, a lonely painter tries to preserve her memory by recreating the color of her hair. In the process, he realizes that achieving the exact shade will demand a great sacrifice.

6. Pumarsis 02:42 2026
   

   Directed:	Noelia Muñoz
   Screenplay:	Noelia Muñoz, Camila Reyes
   Production:	Camila Reyes
   Dialogue Language:	Spanish

   
   

   A woman who is about to be crushed makes her way through nature. She has a destination, and her path is full of sexual self-exploration and challenges. At the peak of her destination, she will have to face a puma that will make her accept herself. Passing through the Magellanic forest towards Torres del Paine, a journey full of Chilean culture and female sexuality.

7. Bunga Raya / 木槿 04:59 2025
   

   Directed:	Kar Yan Cheong
   Screenplay:	Zi Ying Ng
   Production:	Ning Yi Peng

   
   

   Amidst the turmoil of war-torn Malaya, a hibiscus flower bore witness to an unforgettable love. A delivery boy would bring fresh blooms each day to court a Nyonya maiden, who in return stitched her devotion into an embroidered pouch. When Japanese forces invaded, the young man carried this token into battle, only to perish in the smoke of war. That hibiscus, now stained with blood, became an eternal symbol of love transcending life and death.

8. One Screw / 一颗螺丝 04:56 2025
   

   Directed:	Xintong Ruan, Jialu Wu, Shaojia Wang, Qisong Shi, Kaixin Zhang
   Screenplay:	Xintong Ruan, Jialu Wu, Shaojia Wang, Qisong Shi, Kaixin Zhang
   Production:	Jialu Wu

   
   

   In a repair shop, a retired worker grandma battles her slipping dentures. When the dentures reveal their screw-like structure, she bends to reshape them— forging workshop memories into steel teeth. Her gleaming stainless dentures become her badge of defiance.

9. Aye! That's a chick / 是！小鸡 10:12 2025
   

   Directed:	QiAn Yu
   Screenplay:	QiAn Yu
   Production:	YaQi Liu YaQi

   
   

   The boy is about to graduate from a preparatory military school. The drill instructor has taught him that the enemy on the battlefield is a dangerous, cunning chicken demon, unworthy of sympathy or mercy. For their final lesson, the boys must observe the “chicks” captured from the front, live with them for a while, and then execute them by gunfire at the graduation ceremony. Yet as the boy clenches the rope tied to his chick, he begins to wonder: is it really a chick?

10. Rein / 缰绳 06:09 China 2026
    

    Directed:	Yikang Li
    Screenplay:	Luchao Qiu
    Production:	Ruochen Wang

    
    

    In this abstract animation, colorful instinct is crushed by the black lines of societal rules. After a violent breakdown where wild nature clashes with rigid order, the shattered pieces reunite, forging a harmonious individual who balances duty and passion.

11. Light / 匣 09:20 China 2026
    

    Directed:	Xinyan Lu
    Screenplay:	Xinyan Lu
    Production:	Xinzhu Bai

    
    

    The protagonist accidentally obtains a tiny speck of light, which shatters her former belief in the village that "light is bestowed by the God of Light." She then sets out on a journey to uncover the truth of the world. In the end, she breaks out of the small world within the box she once existed in and steps into the real world, witnessing the vast and colorful reality.

12. Steel Feel 04:14 Czechia 2024
    

    Directed:	Katerina Ku
    Screenplay:	Katerina Ku
    Production:	Berenika Šusova
    Dialogue Language:	English

    
    

    This film is a meditation that journeys into the subconscious, exploring hidden emotions and fears. It delves into the challenges of self-control and acceptance, striving to make sense of inner struggles and anxieties in the search for understanding and peace.

13. Epitaph for Detective Dog / Epitafium dla Psiego Detektywa 07:18 2025
    

    Directed:	Michał Krzyczkowski
    Dialogue Language:	Polish

    
    

    A memory through the eyes of a child raised in a small Polish town. Cartoons on VHS tapes, Jesus, and the nearby slaughterhouse all become threatened when a blinding light of the future appears on the horizon.

14. Me and You and Smoke 07:45 United Kingdom 2025
    

    Directed:	Rachel Shiloach
    Production:	Michal Wasilewski
    Dialogue Language:	English

    
    

    A fire ignites, and a boy’s fantasies about a girl dissolve into a haunting reality he can’t escape.

15. Scroll the night away / 刷夜.zip 03:50 2026
    

    Directed:	Yuchun Huang, Yichen Liao, Jiayi Xue, Jiarong Li
    Screenplay:	Yuchun Huang, Yichen Liao, Jiayi Xue, Jiarong Li
    Production:	Jiarong Li

    
    

    Jiahao, who was deeply engrossed in his phone, was consumed by hallucinations of “space compression” in the middle of the night. Eventually, he discovered that he had become a character in a comic book and was being “following” by others.

16. MON 03:36 2026
    

    Directed:

    Petra Nagy

    
    

    The MONs are tiny microplastic creatures living in a hidden universe built from rusty machine parts and forgotten objects. Their enclosed world operates according to its own rules, and their daily lives unfold in a predictable order—until one curious and playful MON commits a mischievous act that disrupts the balance of the community. As a chain reaction of malfunctions spreads throughout their world, the once harmonious system gradually descends into chaos, forcing the little creatures to confront the fragility of the reality they have always taken for granted.