Festival internazionale Segni della Notte - Urbino
International Festival Signs of the Night - Urbino





10° Festival internazionale Segni della Notte - Urbino - April 13 - 19, 2026

24th International Festival Signs of the Night - Italy

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STUDENT JURY


MAIN AWARD


Elegy for the Lost

William Hong-xiao Wie
France, Spain, United Kingdom / 2025 / 0:30:00

An essay film that adopts a lyrical and distinctly queering approach to sexual identity, social dynamics, and everyday life in contemporary China. Through the psychoanalytic and introspective voiceover of a young post-pandemic Chinese migrant in Europe, the film interweaves her private memories of intimacy with public narratives of resistance. As her reflections unfold, she and her community navigate secrecy, repression, survival, looming precarity, and displacement, confronting the personal cost of existing in the current age of turbulence and regression, in a world that demands their silence.



 


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JURY DECLARATION

The jury has selected this film as the best in its category for its virtuosity in combining an excellent screenplay with a range of innovative audiovisual techniques. Particular appreciation is given to its choice of portraying a current and important issue, albeit one that is not widely discussed in Western public debate.


SIGNS AWARD

The Signs Award honours films, which treat an important subject in an original and convincing way

You're not a Fool, Grandpa

Tu n'es pas fou Papi
Adrien Lhoste
France / 2024 / 0:04:13

A little girl, now a woman, writes to her grandfather, wounded by a mental disorder. She watches him as he seethes inwardly, pondering the place of childhood in suffering.

ITALIAN PREMIERE

 

JURY DECLARATION

The jury awards this short film because, through the use of techniques that are not widely known to the general public, it succeeds in creating empathy in the viewer and raising awareness about a delicate issue that affects many lives.




NIGHT AWARD

The Night Award honours films, which are able to balance ambiguity and complexity characterized by enigmatic mysteriousness and subtleness, which keeps mind and consideration moving


I Love You Life

Agnieszka Chojnacka
Poland / 2024 / 0:30:00

In a world without humans, a visitor finds himself exploring the remnants of Earth's culture. Polish museums become a mysterious land of conjecture and fantasy, where artworks gain new life after the end of mankind. Pathos, comedy and melancholy are present in equal measure. Constructivism wanders with romanticism to the to the rhythm of the opera "Twilight of the Gods".



 

 


JURY DECLARATION

The jury awards this film because, through an unusual character, it prompts reflection on the possible consequences of human self-destructiveness.
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EDWARD SNOWDEN AWARD

The Edward Snowden Award honors films, which offer sensitive (mostly) unknown information, facts and phenomena of eminent importance, for which the festival wishes a wide proliferation in the future. nvincing

The Stream XIV

Hiroya Sakurai
Japan /2025 / 0:08:16 08

I focused on how the landscape is transformed when the wind as a weather phenomenon streams through the rice paddies cultivated by humans. It also portrays the lives of the farmers who cultivate these paddies and the local residents who share this environment.
Weather such as wind, rainfall and sunshine are important elements in cultivation, and humans cultivate and harvest while anticipating these elements, and in this way they sustain human life. Rice paddies are not protected like a greenhouse, and they are cultivated under harsh conditions such as typhoons, droughts, and cold weather.
I observed the constantly changing and transforming appearance of the rice paddies through the process of cultivation and weather.
I expressed the changing landscape by connecting the so

 


JURY DECLARATION

The jury awards this film for narrating, in a subtle and elegant way, the effects of climate change.
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JURY AWARD
e unusual and innovative editing techniques


The Land at Night

Richard Peter Tuohy
Australia / 2024 / 0:14:00

I used to find the dusk a very unsettling time, as though the approaching night was something to be feared. It was as if, once night fell you could not flee, and had to face unspecified consequences. Maybe the land remembers and the night will reveal what we might have done...




 

JURY DECLARATION

The jury especially rewards the unusual and innovative editing techniques used to allow the viewer to explore, from a different perspective, environments considered ordinary, going against the classical conventions of cinema.