Jury Picks — Fall 2025 Highlights

In addition to the top honor this season — Best Narrative Short (Grand Jury Prize) awarded to Spare! (France) — Cal Film Festival’s jury team highlights a select group of films that made a strong impression through their storytelling, craft, and creative vision. These Jury Picks are not awards — they are a recognition of distinctive filmmaking that stood out within this season’s selection.

Iradoh – 3 Acts Of Brotherhood directed by Kaique Alves & Thiago Eva (Brazil)

Best Music Video

Iradoh – 3 Acts Of Brotherhood tells a powerful story rooted in a harsh reality: the disappearance of women in Brazil, and the families left behind to navigate the aftermath. When their mother vanishes without explanation, three young brothers grow up shaped by her absence — each choosing a different path in life. One seeks expression through music, another pursues justice within the system, while the third falls into the violence that surrounds them. Their stories unfold through a striking blend of cinema and music that captures both resilience and loss.

The jury was moved by the film’s emotional depth and its commitment to social truth. Alves and Eva use rhythm, performance, and character-driven storytelling to explore how trauma can shape destinies in dramatically different ways. Elevated by its original score and ambitious cinematic scope, Iradoh – 3 Acts Of Brotherhood stands as both a compelling narrative and a call for awareness.

Kinfolk written & directed by Andre Dixon (USA)

Best Horror Short

In Kinfolk, the terror isn’t just in the haunting — it’s in what the haunting reveals. Set against the stark, sun-scorched isolation of 1970s California, this grounded psychological horror follows a Vietnam veteran whose inner battles refuse to stay buried. When a young Native American woman arrives seeking safety, she instead awakens a ghost shaped by war, grief, and generations of unspoken trauma.

What stands out is the film’s confident blend of genre and character. Dixon draws on the mood and craft of classic slow-burn horror, where tension grows from silence, suspicion, and the uncertainty of what’s unseen. The result is an atmospheric story rooted in memory, survival, and the shadows we cannot fully outrun.

Our Last Summer written & directed by Alannah Wilson (Ireland)

Best Newcomer Short

Our Last Summer traces a friendship so deep it feels like a shared identity — until life begins to pull Charlie and Niamh onto separate paths. After years of growing up side-by-side, he is suddenly thousands of miles away, chasing a future in United States, while she remains in Dublin facing her own unseen battles. The film takes an honest look at how distance can magnify silence, and how grief can strike without warning or reason.

What resonated strongly with the jury is the film’s compassionate focus on mental health, vulnerability, and the emotional realities young people often carry quietly. Wilson captures the fragility of a moment in life where everything feels possible — and just as easily, can fall apart. Poignant and deeply human.

Summerville 70 written & directed by David Boatwright (USA)

Honorable Mention for Narrative Short (Grand Jury Prize)

Summerville 70 offers a gentle, nostalgic snapshot of small-town life at a moment when America — and its youth — were changing fast. Adapted from Wesley Moore III’s novel Today, Oh Boy, the film follows Rory through a single summer day in 1970 Summerville, South Carolina. Through chance encounters with strangers, he begins to understand a world larger and more complicated than he ever imagined.

What stood out to the jury is the film’s subtlety — a coming-of-age story told not through grand revelations, but through the quiet lessons found in ordinary moments. Boatwright captures the texture of the era with authenticity and heart. Summerville 70 is a warm, sincere slice of memory — a reminder of a time when growing up happened one small discovery at a time.

Thank You for the Ride, Aileen written & directed by JP Pullings (USA)

Best Actress and Outstanding Achievement Award for Thriller Short

Thank You for the Ride, Aileen follows a woman who uses her car as the only place where life finally feels quiet. Aileen is a teacher caught between a school strike, a sick husband, and a daughter on the brink of motherhood — responsibilities that never stop pulling at her. Driving strangers around the city becomes her escape from everything she can’t fix. But on this particular day, a routine pickup delivers an unexpected and unsettling reminder that safety is never guaranteed when you let someone into your space.

The jury was impressed by how the film turns a familiar everyday setting into a suspenseful, character-driven thriller. Pullings keeps the focus on Aileen’s inner life — her strength, her exhaustion, and the vulnerability of someone who keeps moving forward because stopping would mean confronting too much at once. With a gripping performance at its core, Thank You for the Ride, Aileen is a tense, empathetic story about a woman navigating uncertainty, one mile at a time.

The Feast of the Serpent directed by Craig M Baurley (USA)

Best Fantasy Short and Best Production Design

A dinner table becomes a battleground of power and legacy in The Feast of the Serpent, a visually striking descent into fantasy and ritual. Aelia’s return home places her face-to-face with a mother and sister whose devotion to bloodline demands sacrifice — both physical and spiritual. What begins as a ceremonial gathering unfolds into a nightmarish confrontation with the forces that claim her identity and body.

The film stood out for its bold visual imagination and layered production design, where every detail contributes to a world shaped by mythology and menace. Baurley’s direction draws from movement, gesture, and haunting symbolism to craft a story where family tradition casts long and dangerous shadows. A dark, meticulously constructed fantasy short.

Thickly Settled written & directed by Brian D Jones & Jordan Brooks (USA)

Outstanding Achievement Award (Grand Jury Prize) for Narrative Short and Best Female Director

In Thickly Settled, time becomes both a temptation and a test. A man burdened by a failing marriage stumbles upon a startling possibility: the chance to revisit his past and reshape his life before it splintered. But every choice carries its own cost, forcing him to confront not only what he has lost, but what could still remain. The film blends intimate personal drama with a grounded touch of science fiction, exploring the fragile threads that hold relationships together.

This selection resonated with the jury for the authenticity of its storytelling and the emotional clarity of its central conflict. Jones and Brooks approach time travel not as spectacle, but as a deeply human wish — a window into regret, hope, and the small decisions that shape a lifetime. Quietly observant and thoughtfully crafted.

Where The Shadows Wait written & directed by Riley Robbins (USA)

Best Thriller Short and Best Cinematography

A routine welfare check twists into a nightmare in Where The Shadows Wait, a tightly paced thriller where every shadow seems to breathe. When two officers enter a collapsing house on a frigid winter night, they encounter a man whose unsettling calm suggests danger just out of sight. In the darkness of this forgotten home — a place where memories fester and time feels frozen — survival becomes uncertain, and the line between justice and fear grows razor-thin.

The film stood out to the jury for its confident visual storytelling and tension that never loosens its grip. Robbins combines precise cinematography with a chilly atmosphere that turns silence into menace and light into a fleeting ally. Beneath the terror lies a human core: a reminder that the scariest places aren’t always supernatural — sometimes the darkness is already with us.