Samuel Suffren’ s Blue Heart has emerged triumphant at the 48th Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, winning the gathering’s Grand Prix in the International Competition. It solidified a good year for home-grown films at the festival, as many French movies and co-productions walked away with awards outside of the National Competition.

Suffren’s film, which bowed in the 2025 Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, completes a trilogy of shorts that examines those left behind in the wake of migration from the director’s native Haiti. Here, two elderly parents await news from their son, who has gone off in search of the American Dream. Mixing documentary-style footage with some surreal tableaux, the film is a subtly affecting work about loss and hope.

Other movies that struck a chord in the International Competition included the Dutch comedy A Shot of Art by Ilke Paddenburg, which won the Audience Prize, and which takes a wry look at the art world, the patriarchy and virtue signalling. Veering from subtle satire to knockabout comedy in a minute, the film is something of a silly delight with a core that carries a serious message.

The Candidate for Nomination for Best Short at the 2027 European Film Awards – as well as being the recipient of a Special Mention from the student jury – was Buda, Raphaël Kaddour’s affecting documentary about a waste recycling centre in Brussels. While the idea seems simple, the film reveals layers of class difference, the hopes and dreams of ordinary people, and even modern-day frustration at governmental bureaucracy.

Best Animation in the International Competition went to Jan-Dirk Bouw’s Breaking Walls (Netherlands/Belgium/Norway), in which journalist and activist Hoi Yi fights against the global rise of surveillance and censorship, while suppressing his queer identity from his family.

The National Competition saw Shayma' Awawdeh’s extraordinarily powerful documentary Intersecting Memory (France/Palestine) pick up the Grand Prix. In the film, the director, who was six years old when the Second Intifada broke out, discovers a box of videotapes more than 20 years later. Examining her own memories, through intimate footage of home, that of destroyed buildings, stark imagery of those wounded and dead, and children playing in the rubble, the short becomes a raw patchwork of memory and a reminder of the constant threat of erasure that Palestinian people face, especially in the present day.

Other popular films included Bread and Games by Judith Longuet-Marx and Léa Tarral (France/Belgium), a work about living amongst the noise and fury of the 2024 Olympic Games, which won the Special Jury Prize, Best Comedy and the Procirep Award for Best Production, as well as Veuillez Patienter by Solal Bouloudnine (France), which scooped the Audience Award.

The Lab Competition saw Jocelyn Charles’ animation God Is Shy (France) pocket the Grand Prix. The film, which also premiered in the 2025 Directors’ Fortnight, oozes existentialist dread as a couple on a train are interrupted by a woman who insists she can speak to God. France also triumphed with Sixty-seven Milliseconds by fleuryfontaine, which won both the Audience Award and the Festivals Connexion Award. The film seeks a bullet whose trail has been captured on surveillance camera footage, and questions the legitimacy of policing in France while warning of its excesses.

The awards on Saturday night were the conclusion to a year in which both the festival and the short-film scene in general seemed in rude health. While no official figures were available as of the time of writing, the rumblings are that the festival is on track to beat last year’s admissions figure of over 173,000, while the Short Film Market welcomed more than 4,000 industry guests from across the world.

Here is the full list of award winners:

International Competition

Grand Prix
Blue Heart - Samuel Suffren (Haiti/France)

Special Jury Prize
Buah - Jen Nee Lim (Singapore)

Audience Prize
A Shot of Art - Ilke Paddenburg (Netherlands)

Best Animation
Breaking Walls - Jan-Dirk Bouw (Netherlands/Belgium/Norway)

Outstanding Performance
Ana Barja - Close to September (Spain)

European Film Awards Candidacy
Buda - Raphaël Kaddour (Belgium)

Student Prize
Bleat! - Ananth Subramaniam (Malaysia/Philippines)
Special Mention
Buda - Raphaël Kaddour

Canal+/Ciné+ OCS Award
We Were Here - Pranav Bashin (India)

Best Queer Short
Birthmark - George Peter Barbari (Lebanon/France/Croatia)
Special Mention
Buah - Jen Nee Lim (Singapore)

National Competition

Grand Prix
Intersecting Memory – Shayma' Awawdeh (France/Palestine)

Special Jury Prize
Bread and Games - Judith Longuet-Marx, Léa Tarral (France/Belgium)

Audience Prize
Veuillez Patienter - Solal Bouloudnine (France)

Outstanding Performance
Marie Denys - Fanny at the Beach (France)

Best Original Score
Amélie Bonfils - Curiosity on Planet Mars (France)

SACD Award for Best French-language Animation
Sulaimani - Vinnie Ann Bose (France)

SACD Award for Best First or Second Live-action Short
Sous Les Ruines - Nadhir Bouslama (France)

Student Prize
Murs - Basile Charpentier (France)
Special Mention
Intersecting Memory – Shayma' Awawdeh

Canal+ Award
Veuillez Patienter - Solal Bouloudnine

“Fernand-Raynaud” Award for Best Comedy
Bread and Games - Judith Longuet-Marx, Léa Tarral

Procirep Award for Best Production
Kidam - Bread and Games

Lab Competition

Grand Prix
God Is Shy - Jocelyn Charles (France)

Special Jury Prize
L'Mina - Randa Maroufi (France/Morocco)
Special Mentions
Water Sports - Whammy Alcazaren (Philippines)
O Rio de Janeiro Continua Lindo - Felipe Casanova (Belgium/Brazil/Switzerland)

Audience Prize
Sixty-seven Milliseconds – fleuryfontaine (France)

Student Prize
Lengua Muerta - José Jiménez (Chile)
Special Mention
Ân Marde Sefid Poush – Aman (France/Iran)

Festivals Connexion Award
Sixty-seven Milliseconds - fleuryfontaine

Special Effects Award by Adobe
Um - Nieto (France)

Award for Best Documentary
O Rio de Janeiro Continua Lindo - Felipe Casanova

XR Competition

Best XR Film
A Long Goodbye - Victor Maes, Kate Voet (Belgium/Netherlands/Luxembourg)

Out of Competition

Canal+ Kids Award
Nils Karlsson Pyssling - Yaprak Morali, Are Austnes (Norway/Sweden)
Special Mention
Experiences and Learning. And Parenting. - Malgorzata Rybak (Poland)

Festival Grant
Perpétue - Joyce Kuoh Moukouri (France)