Glasgow Short Film Festival 2026: The Award Winners

Glasgow Short Film Festival came to a close last night with its annual awards ceremony. Among the celebration, there was also a sense of relief in the air for a festival team who had once again hosted Scotland’s largest and best celebration of short film in less than ideal circumstances.

GSFF had planned to return to the CCA, its traditional home, for this 19th edition, but those plans were scuppered by the devastating permanent closure of that arts centre just weeks before the festival was due to announce its programme. Some additional cash from Screen Scotland allowed GSFF to pivot to different venues at the 11th hour, but with the various organisations at Trongate 103 also under threat, it’s a vital reminder that our vibrant film festival scene can only exist if we have the venues to host them.

The most popular strand of GSFF continues to be its Scottish Shorts Competition. 22 films screened across four sold-out programmes, and the quality of the films at the two screenings for which I could scramble a ticket suggests the scene is as vibrant and creative as it’s ever been. The Scottish Comp jury consisted of Luce Grosjean, founder and director of animation distribution company Miyu Distribution; Federica Pugliese, artistic director at Lago Film Festival; and Jen Davies, co-founder of Glasgow-based film distribution company Conic. Their winner was Klarissa Webster’s documentary Each to Their Own World.

Each to Their Own World

The film takes the form of a three-way conversation between a trio of Deaf women, one of whom is Webster, although it later opens up to the film’s crew, who are also Deaf. Shot on a sound stage with three cameras focused on the film’s subjects, the filmmaking is direct and relatively simple, but the women’s conversation is riveting, eye-opening and deeply poignant, with each discussing the frustrations and challenges of living in a world where Deaf people are left to do all the heavy lifting to connect with the ‘hearing culture’. Their brutally honest and often very funny conversation is conducted in sign language, with the only sound coming from the movement of their hands and the slight smacks of their lips as they mouth their words. Between these almost-silent conversations, Webster provides a visual and aural insight into the Deaf experience with brief vignettes depicting the aural confusion of our booming, overstimulated world.

The jury's decision to award Each to Their Own World was unanimous. They said: "This film is an emotionally resonant and beautifully crafted documentary, singled out by a direction which initially appeared simple but gradually revealed impressive depth and nuance... Both funny and poignant, the sound design was particularly important in shining a light on the different ways in which the work itself can be experienced by different audiences."

Ritchie

The jury gave a special mention to Ritchie by Anton McPhilemy. It was certainly one of the funniest films I saw in the competition, but it was also elevated by a disarming streak of melancholy in its absurdist tale of small-town life. The jury said: “We would like to give a special mention to a film we found genuinely funny, well-written with great acting. It was heartfelt and had some good singing! We can’t wait to see Anton’s next project.” The audience at GSFF was clearly on the same wavelength as the jury: Ritchie won the Festival's Audience Award.

The Young Scottish Filmmaker Prize, which celebrates filmmakers from across Scotland aged 18 to 25, is split into two categories. The first is for a filmmaker working independently outside of any funding schemes or education institutions, and that award went to Agnes Athley for We Walk at Night, a beautiful film that blends black and white photography of Edinburgh’s streets, allyways and staircases at night (both stills photography and moving images) with testimonies from several women from different nations who’ve been harrassed, stalked and manhandled while walking at night in their home towns.

The second Young Scottish Filmmaker Prize is for a filmmaker with some sort of funding or institutional support, and that winner was Meg Wriggles for Mother’s Influence, her nuanced portrayal of her mother, a lifestyle influencer whose suffered from eating disorders in her youth and now that she’s turned 60 is going to extreme measures to achieve the impossible beauty standers she feels society demands of her. Deeply bruising and heartfelt, the film is a gorgeous snapshot of Wriggles and her mother’s complex relationship.

Manal Issa, 2024

The Bill Douglas Award for International Short Film, meanwhile, went to Elisabeth Subrin for Manal Issa, 2024.

A riff on her previous film Maria Schneider, 1983 (based on an archive interview with the Last Tango in Paris and The Passenger actor as she discussed her experience of sexism in the film industry), Subrin’s new film posses similar questions to Lebanese-French actor Manal Issa, who has paused her prolific career in films like Memory Box and The Swimmers until there is a ceasefire in Gaza. Issa doesn’t appear in the film; we only hear her voice as she answers Subrin’s questions. Instead, Subrin shows a series of static shots of a table in a Beirut cafe, with several objects (a vase of flowers, a phone, a burning cigarette in an ashtray, a glass of water, a cup of coffee) arranged like a still life, which are subtly rearranged with each edit.

The jury – which consisted of Ruairí McCann, co-editor of Irish film journal Ultra Dogme, Libyan-British filmmaker Naziha Arebi, and Paris-based filmmaker Nicolas Gourault – commended Manal Issa, 2024 for its "moving, bold, yet simple form, using minimal means and a powerful interplay between absence and presence, to question what it means to make images (and to withdraw them) in an era of genocide unfolding live on our phones.”

McCann, Arebi and Gourault gave two special mentions, to CUL-DE-SAC! by Clyde Gates and Gabriel Sanson, and Daria’s Night Flowers by Maryam Tafakory. Once again, GSFF’s audience was on a similar page to the jury; they gave CUL-DE-SAC! the audience prize.

Matt Lloyd, GSFF Festival Director, said: “I am so grateful to the juries for their excellent choices of two thoughtful, challenging and formally ambitious works that demonstrate the unique and varied strengths of the short film form. And yet again, our audience has shown their impeccable taste by elevating two magnificent works that were also recognised by the juries with special mentions.”