The Audience Award: NEXT presented by Adobe

Trapped in museum archives, Ancestors bend time and space to find their way home. History, spirituality, and the law collide as tribal repatriation specialists fight to return and rebury Indigenous human remains, offering a revealing look at the still-pervasive worldviews that justified collecting them in the first place.

Immersive POV camera footage reveals electric performances, candid interviews, and intimate backstage life with Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Pavement, Rancid, Beck, The Amps, and Bikini Kill — an all-access view inside an era-defining moment in music.

A brave girl and her friends must escape a kids television show.

When runaway teen Ju-Ju is embraced by a tribe of misfit youths in Kabukicho, she finds belonging for the first time — until betrayal and despair twist her haven into a prison, and she’s left with one way to take back control.

The untold origins of artificial intelligence lie not in machines but in power, revealing the fantasies behind the hype that got us here and where we go next.

Twelve-year-old Lil Ant struggles to connect with his father when he begins to see surreal, almost spectral visions of boys drifting around his neighborhood. Their presence reveals a link between father and son, laying bare the threads that bind family, legacy, and place.

NEXT Innovator Award

On a remote Scottish isle, siblings Isla and Sandy hunt birds and talk to mythical beings while fighting off outsiders. Their lives change when Daniel, an awkward official, arrives to relocate them.

A journey to Michoacán’s hypermasculine rodeos descends into the subconscious of memory, queer desire, and longing, leading to a reckoning with the wounds and beauty of a home left behind.

Two star-crossed teenage boys must escape a violent entity that takes the form of the person they desire most — each other.

When a messy millennial underachiever accidentally gets alien-pregnant, she must overcome skeptical doctors, a useless baby daddy, and her oversharing mum in order to survive and reclaim her life.

As a series of perverse scam calls unsettles an idyllic retirement community, a starry-eyed nurse becomes entangled with her mysterious patient.

After the death of her father, a grieving young girl moves to an isolated house in a new town with her mother and grandmother, only to discover there is something monstrous hidden in the town’s history and the woods behind their new home.

Hana, a lovelorn medical student, becomes terrorized by a hungry ghost after taking part in an obscure weight loss craze: eating human ashes.

NEXT Special Jury Award for Creative Expression

After 20 years of chronicling his Puerto Rican family, a director and his mother face devastating losses. Through tears and laughter, they craft animations that bring their loved ones back to life, discovering that every act of creation is also an act of letting go.

The host of a popular paranormal podcast becomes haunted by terrifying recordings mysteriously sent her way.

In Hong Kong, a young woman haunted by visions of her future self meets a stranger who changes the course of her night — and possibly her life.