At a ceremony held at the Cine Humberto Mauro, the jury announced the award-winning films in the International, Minas Gerais, and Brazil competitive sections. The CapibaraTrophy was also awarded to the short film most voted for by the popular jury and to the honoree of the inaugural José Zuba Júnior award.
At the opening session of the 27th FestCurtasBH, the silent films of Narcisa Hirsch, the Argentine experimental filmmaker honored in this edition, incited an equally silent pact in the audience: more than a hundred bodies held their breath, suspended their breathing, and muffled noises, a common and synchronous gesture of love and respect for cinema. The festival conjured its first and greatest magic: electrifying sensibilities and forging a multifaceted field of sharing. The festival’s awards ceremony celebrates the films highlighted by the various juries and these vibrations that occurred throughout the ten days of programming.
The jury of the International Competition, composed of Ana Carolina Soares, Flaviana Lasan, and Mariah Soares, praised the “risks taken in establishing a territorialized cinema” by Samuel Suffren in Dreams Like Paper Boats (Des rêves en bateaux papiers). In the trio’s words, the Haitian director manages to express “a fraction of a nation violated by colonization that, even being the first independent nation in the world, starting with the Black revolt, continues to reflect the consequences of this violence. Through the drama of a family that subverts gender norms, we are immersed in a narrative marked by forced emigration.” For the jury, “in black and white – the origin of cinema – an improvement in audiovisual language is constructed at its technological peak, in its strong aesthetic and narrative charge, sophisticated even in ruin.”
The honorable mention was awarded to the Iranian film Daria’s Night Flowers (گلهای شب ِدریا), by Maryam Tafakory, a filmmaker who “courageously and alchemically rebels,” and whose film “reignites—and burns like fire—all the oppression and silencing imposed on women. The force of her expressiveness, manifested in texts, drawings, colors, and montages, transforms into an act of symbolic revenge that, for us, sounds like an awakening.”
In the Brazilian Competitive Program, the affection and affectation of Leona Vingativa, Aria Nunes, Laiana do Socorro, Victor Henrique Oliver, Agarb Braga, Mac Silva, and Juan Moraes captivated the jury, composed of Bramma Bremmer, Fernanda Pessoa, and Rubens Fabrício Anzolin. They highlighted the “regional and class decentralization and formal inventiveness” of Americana, from Pará, an already unavoidable embodiment of the transformative mockery of queer cinema. In a quite distinct key and cadence, the jury awarded an Honorable Mention to Letters from Absurd (Cartas do Absurdo), from Rio de Janeiro, which “through the mystery and revelation of a device.” For them, Gabraz’s work “bets on the sustaining of duration and the enchantment between montage, word, and surface.”
Among the films from Minas Gerais, the jury, composed of Ana Júlia Silvino, Anna Flávia Dias Salles, and Marcos Donizetti, awarded the Belo Horizonte-based film Núbia, by Bárbara Bello, “for its aesthetic courage, the consistency of its formal proposal, and the unique way it inhabits the erotic-urban space.” Princess Macula and the sad song (Princesa Macula e o Canto Triste), by Mayara Mascarenhas, from São João del Rei, received an honorable mention for inhabiting “the in-between space of dream and memory, in a gesture of song and enchantment. Reality, with its times and bodies, pulsates freely, reinvented in fiction.”
In addition to the Capybara Trophy, the winning films in the competitive screenings receive a prize of five thousand reais.
All films screened in the competitive and parallel sections also competed for the Audience Award. At the 27th FestCurtasBH, the most voted short film Tita: 100 Years of Struggle and Faith, directed by Danilo Candombe. The film is a celebration of the legacy of Maria Gregório Ventura, Dona Tita, matriarch of the Morro Santo Antônio quilombo in Itabira. At 100 years old, she shares the knowledge and memories of an ancestral life” (Gabriel Araújo, member of the Festival’s selection committee). In addition to the Capivara Trophy, the winner receives a prize of three thousand reais.
The ceremony was also marked by the creation and awarding of the José Zuba Júnior Prize, in honor of the festival’s creator, a film lover who gifted us with this space for sharing and encountering short films more than three decades ago. The prize is awarded by the Festival organization to artists, collectives, and film workers in various fields such as criticism, research, production, and curating who stand out for contributing to the aesthetic, political, and social vitality of short films.
Recognizing its impact on public education through short film production, FestCurtasBH awarded the prize to the project “Lights, Camera, School in Action,” developed at the Newton Amaral Franco Municipal School in Contagem, under the coordination of teacher Sheila Rodrigues. Created in 2017, the project, which focuses on the educational potential of cinema, involves students of all ages in scriptwriting, filming, and post-production of films that address social issues such as prejudice, racism, the environment, and friendship. The project, which has already participated in more than 50 national and international festivals, presented in FestCurtasBH this year the short films The Cat and Nature, which captivated audiences in the children’s program.
Finally, the closing of FestCurtas cast its spells in honor of Mexican filmmaker Azucena Losana, who was honored in the previous edition, with the screening of her films Pantano (2019) and Warmi Danzaq (2025).
The awarded showcase takes place on Sunday (November 9th) at 8 pm, concluding an extensive and intense journey of fury and tenderness. FestCurtasBH consolidates itself, year after year, as an incendiary and visceral space that welcomes, with poetry and critical thinking, the aesthetic malleability and political radicalism of short films. See you next year!