The award for Best Short Fiction Film this year goes to Beyond the Mind. A poetic and deeply symbolic film that stayed with the jury long after the credits rolled.
Using the story of a donkey as a metaphor for exclusion, loneliness, and the loss of meaning, the film explores what happens when someone can no longer fulfil a role within a community. The return to a once familiar home that no longer offers a place to belong gives the film a deeply tragic and universal emotional weight.
With strong symbolic storytelling and a remarkable sensitivity, Beyond the Mind reflects on dignity, displacement, and belonging with honesty and care.
