With the 2025 LJMU MA Short Film Festival drawing to a close last Friday, it’s time to reflect on the Award Winners and Special Mentions from this year’s edition. This year, our jury was made up of a combination of academics, industry experts, and final year LJMU students, who were tasked with selecting the winner of the Paper Bird awards from a very competitive field.
This Year’s Winners and Special Mentions
Describing it as a deeply personal insight into the dark side of competitive sports, our Documentary jury chose Cecilia Palmeri’s Swim Higher, and the recipient of this year’s Paper Bird for Documentary. Their Special Mention went to Max Vázquez Montufar’s Roots, a moving and hopeful look at the lasting bonds between mother and child.
Our Animation jury chose Lewis Macaulay’s Why Won’t Anyone Eat Me? as the recipient of this year’s Paper Bird Award for Animation, describing it as a happy indulgence in the weird, gooey habits we usually keep to ourselves. The Special Mention went to Sonu Thomas’ The Man Who Loved Flowers, a poetic and deeply moving look at challenging traditional masculinity.
Praising the chemistry of its two leads and its important message, our Fiction jury chose Ewa Japola’s Count My Lov3 as the recipient of this year’s Paper Bird award for Fiction. They chose two films to share a Special Mention: Nika Ardito’s Growing Up is Killing Your Mother and Mikel Garrido’s We Have Homeland, both of which were praised for their quality and tense atmosphere.
For its powerful and haunting evocation of experimental form, our jury selected Raphael Heinisch’s A Train Arrives as the winner of this year’s Paper Bird Experimental award. The Special Mention went to Minna Abalian’s Oudenk, which the jury described as an emotive film that intertwined documentary aesthetics with multi-media style to perfectly reflect the significance of family.
Our final award, the Audience Paper Bird, was hotly contested throughout the duration of the festival, with just 6 votes separating the winner and second place. This year’s Audience Paper Bird award went to Max Vázquez Montufar for his film, Roots, and we were lucky enough to have Max and sound designer Daniel Alejandro present to receive the award at our live Awards Ceremony.
You can watch the replay of the ceremony below and catch all of the live Q&As from this year’s festival at our YouTube channel.
Watch the Replay of our Awards Ceremony
That officially wraps up another year of the LJMU MA Short Film Festival, and what a year it has been! Out of the 2691 films we received, we managed to select 37 which we feel represent the cream of emergent student filmmaking talent. We’ll be back for our 6th edition next year with more incredible student films, but for the time being, on behalf of all of the staff and students at this year’s festival, we’d like to thank all of the filmmakers who submitted and the audiences who watched – without you, there would be no festival.