AWARD CATEGORIES
The categories below are as listed on our FilmFreeway page. Whatever you make, there is a place for it here. Every category is judged by the same international jury with the same point based scoring.
BEST AI GENERATED FILM
Films made wholly or substantially with generative AI tools. We are interested in how new tools serve old virtues: story, character, feeling. Show us work where the technology disappears and the storytelling stays.
Very few festivals give AI film a serious home. We do, and the jury holds it to the same standard as every other category.
STAFFORDSHIRE FILMMAKER
The local anchor of the festival: an award for film made in the county or by filmmakers from Staffordshire. If you shoot in Stoke-on-Trent, study in Stafford or cut your films in Lichfield, this is yours to win.
Part of our commitment to growing film culture across Staffordshire, not just screening the world's work here.
Narrative features of any genre and any language. We look for a story that earns its running time and a director in control of it.
The heart of any festival programme. A short that knows exactly what it is doing beats a long film that almost does.
Work made in full or part time education. We judge the filmmaking, not the budget, and past student winners sit proudly in our archive.
Feature length non fiction. We want documentaries that take us somewhere real and leave us knowing or feeling something we did not before.
True stories told with economy. Past winners have covered everything from war reporting to rare medical conditions.
Non fiction made in education. Access and honesty count for more here than polish.
Animated work of any technique: drawn, stop motion, CG or mixed. We look for a world we believe in and a reason it had to be animated.
Short form animation in any style. Some of the most loved films in our archive live in this category.
Animation made in education, where technique is still forming and ideas run ahead of it. That energy is exactly what we want to see.
Work that breaks form on purpose. If your film does not fit anywhere else and that is the point, it fits here.
Episodic storytelling for any screen. Show us a first episode that makes the jury want a second.
Music videos and filmed performance. We judge the film as a film: image, rhythm and idea in service of the music.
Your first film, in any form. Every filmmaker in our archive had a first film once, and this award exists to say so.
A complete film in sixty seconds. The hardest brief on this page and one of the most fun to judge.
Unproduced feature screenplays. The jury reads for voice, structure and scenes a director would fight to shoot.
Unproduced short screenplays. Precision matters: every page has to earn its place.
Original songs written for film or standing alone. Songwriters have won at this festival since the beginning.
Decided by the people in the seats, not the jury. Win the room on the night and this one is yours.