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.

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.

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

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.

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.