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.

A father-to-be tries to figure out what is happening with the AI insanity, exploring the existential dangers and stunning promise of this technology that humanity has created.

A son of one of America’s wealthiest families creates a communist revolutionary base in rural Massachusetts as a means of disrupting the capitalist system he grew up in but has now come to despise. It’s the starting point of an astonishing journey.

When three American doctors — Palestinian, Jewish, and Zoroastrian — enter Gaza to save lives, they find themselves caught between medicine and politics, risking everything to expose the truth.

When workers at the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota are forced to take a substantial pay cut, the local union takes a stand for its members. Their strike tests the fragile promise of the American ideal, revealing the cost of survival when the dream no longer feels shared.

Festival Favorite Award Winner

Against political resistance and industry skepticism, Luis Valdez pushes Chicano storytelling from the fields to the film screen with Zoot Suit and La Bamba, crafting iconic works that challenge, celebrate, and expand America’s story.

Singer, songwriter, and actor Courtney Love has long had an impact on rock and pop culture. Now sober and set to release new music for the first time in over a decade, Courtney is ready to reveal her story, unfiltered and unapologetic.

Short Film Grand Jury Prize

Now 93, Martin Luther King Jr.’s lawyer and speechwriter reflects on the personal cost and surprising truths of making history, offering an intimate insider’s view of the Civil Rights Movement.

Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award: US Documentary

An archive-driven exploration of the life, work, and legacy of iconic, pioneering lesbian filmmaker Barbara Hammer.

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.

World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Award for Journalistic Impact Winner

The love story of a London-based Lebanese journalist and a Syrian activist and cameraman as told through 13 years of personal archives across revolutions, war, and exile.

Short Film Jury Award: Non-Fiction

On an idyllic farm in rural Georgia, Black beekeeping parents tenderly share their knowledge of life, love, and nature with their young sons while restoring their homestead.

Explores the circumstances that led to Brittney Griner playing basketball outside the U.S. despite being one of the best players in the sport, including her harrowing detainment, unwavering determination to secure her freedom, and her advocacy for the release of other wrongful detainees.

A portrait of the inimitable singer, songwriter, and icon Marianne Faithfull.

Markus — whose great-great-great-grandfather invented the nutcracker doll — makes nutcrackers for a living, as did each of his forefathers who descended from the great inventor. Markus discusses his life decisions.

After his teenage son goes missing, Daniel scours the depths of the Vistula River, torn between the dread of a fatal leap and the hope that his son may still be alive.