Yuval Hadadi’s A Man Walks Down the Street has won the Narrative Feature Award and Rena Effendi’s Searching for Satyrus took the award for Best Documentary Feature Award at the 32nd Austin Film Festival.
Other top awards including Comedy Vanguard Feature Award went to Theatre People; and Dark Matters Feature Award went to Cruel Hands directed to Al Kalyk.
The festival honored its 2025 Script and Film Competition Award winners in 33 categories at the Awards Luncheon with AFF’s signature Bronze Typewriter Award.
“For over three decades, our competitions have served to highlight emerging creatives and recognize original storytelling,” said Barbara Morgan, Executive Director of Austin Film Festival. “At a time when the industry is in flux, we’re proud to be partnering with so many industry leaders to identify the next generation of screenwriters and create real opportunities.”
2025 Film Competition Award & Fellowship Winners
Narrative Feature Award Presented by Big Indie Pictures
A Man Walks Down the Street
writer/director: Yuval Hadadi
Raanan, a middle aged man, returns home after 30 years abroad. A chance encounter with an elderly man unlocks troubled memories, and a brief affair with a much younger man, sends him spiraling through generational rifts, and force him to confront his internalized homophobia and emotional wounds of his past.
Documentary Feature Award
Searching for Satyrus
writer/director: Rena Effendi
On a quest to find a rare butterfly named after her late father, a Soviet entomologist, a photographer journeys into the borderlands of two warring nations—where the fragile insect becomes an unexpected guide into her father’s past.
Honorable Mention
Bite to Bite
director: Kelly Lipscomb
The fascinating story of one giant Bluefin Tuna on an unlikely journey around the world with two fishermen from Nova Scotia to the legendary Tsukiji Seafood Market in Japan and the underbelly of a lucrative but controversial global sushi industry.
Comedy Vanguard Feature Award
Theatre People
writer: Michael B. Breen
Two no-name actors aren’t having the Broadway careers they dreamed of. The only thing that keeps them going are the small roles they’ve consistently booked in New York’s off-broadway theatre scene. But when they both fail to land good roles for the upcoming season, the future looks bleak.With no alternative, the actors decide they’re going to do the only thing that will get them back in the game: they’re going to become playwrights and write a new play with the biggest, longest, most dramatic scenes possible. And, most importantly, they’ll cast themselves.
Dark Matters Feature Award
Cruel Hands
writers: Al & Matthew Kalyk / director: Al Kalyk
A mother and her young son escape from an abusive husband to an isolated farmhouse, only to find themselves trapped between him and a raging bushfire that surrounds them.
Narrative Short Award
Foxhole
writer/director: Nick Dugan
A meditative groundskeeper seeks refuge in the quiet rhythms of a countryside inn, but his past refuses to stay silent.
Narrative Student Short Award
Recess
writer/director: Jan Saczek
A young English teacher accidentally sends her nude photo to one of her students.
Documentary Short Award
We’re Fine
director: Misha Karpenko
Two years into the war, Ukrainian artists unite at Burning Man to build a massive sculpture from war-scarred road signs, turning trauma into art.Strangers become family as their creation transforms rubble into a symbol of resilience, hidden pain, and unity.
Animated Short Award
Beyond Measure
writer/director: David Ferrier
A man discovers he is physically shrinking, forcing him and his wife to navigate life’s ups and downs with increasing creativity and adaptability as his stature diminishes.
Produced Digital Series Award
Bliss Talent
writers: Rachel Ravel & Elvira Ibragimova / director: Elvira Ibragimova
Following the departure of her star client, Tammy Bliss, a delusional children’s talent agent in rural Texas, strives to dazzle (and deceive) a documentary film crew while picking up the pieces of her fading career.
Enderby Entertainment Filmmaking Fellowship
My Only Friend is a Robot Named Beans
Writer/Director: Anika Kan Grevstad
In an isolated future, Ruby (newly 25 and seriously lacking a social life) finds her lonesome routines disrupted when she makes an unlikely new friend: a mail-order robot. Ruby finds herself reluctantly learning lessons from her new robot friend: the power of opening up, the importance of platonic intimacy, and how to quell that anxious voice in the back of your head that wonders why anyone would want to be friends with you.
Young Filmmaker Competition Award
Time Will Tell
writer/director: Peyton Cooper
A high school relationship built on a debate over the significance of moments unravels when one moment never occurs.
2025 Script Competition Award & Fellowship Winners
Drama Screenplay Award presented by The Writers Guild of America, East
The Other Side of 25
by Becca Hurd
A stand-up comedian with commitment issues reluctantly becomes the gestational surrogate for her older sister. But after a dangerous accident, she is faced with the frightening reality of raising the child on her own.
Comedy Feature Screenplay Award
Lauren Lindsay Can Go To Hell
by Kate Beacom & Lacey Jeka
Lauren Lindsay was the most popular girl in school… until she died. Now a ghost, she must reconcile with the girl she bullied to earn redemption. As the two navigate unfinished business and unexpected feelings, forgiveness starts to look a lot like falling in love.
Big Indie Pictures Fellowship
Roots of Conflict
by Ari Mostow
After a big oak tree crashes onto his house, a hapless stay-at-home dad is thrust into a feud with eccentric neighbors, and must step up as mounting chaos threatens to unravel his marriage, his family, and the suburban idyll he’s desperate to protect.
The Donners’ Company Award
Believe/Bерим
by Ryan Werner
Based on a true story, Soviet hockey star Vladimir Konstantinov risks everything to join the Detroit Red Wings. After their 1997 Stanley Cup triumph, a life-altering tragedy tests the power of resilience, loyalty, and brotherhood in a moving portrait of courage against all odds.
Enderby Entertainment Award
The Other Side of 25
by Becca Hurd
A stand-up comedian with commitment issues reluctantly becomes the gestational surrogate for her older sister. But after a dangerous accident, she is faced with the frightening reality of raising the child on her own.
Josephson Entertainment Screenwriting Award
Black Silk
by Patrick Michael
When a magnetic but dangerous father re-enters his son’s life, the bond they form is as sacred as it is ruinous, forcing the boy to choose between the myth of manhood or a truth of his own design.
Horror Screenplay Award
SHIFT
by Danny Salemme
When a woman’s postpartum delusions turn deadly, she must uncover the truth behind her adopted daughter’s mysterious origins to survive.
Sci-Fi Screenplay Award
On the Other Side
by Lanre Olabisi
When your mirror image from another universe has the NASA career you’ve always dreamed of, you got two choices: wallow in self-pity or commit interdimensional identity theft. A bitter physics professor and her husband opt for the latter. Unfortunately, karma works in all directions.
Wonder Project | Stand Together Fellowship
27 Cows
by Christopher Holt
When a big-hearted Yorkshire farmer can’t face sending his beloved herd of 27 cows to slaughter, he grabs a map and a backpack and walks them 100 miles, cross-country to an animal sanctuary — sparking ridicule, resistance, and unexpected fame along the way.
YMH Studios Fellowship
Follow The Money
by Patrick Franklin
When a fiasco with a stubborn parking gate leaves a man ruined, his only shot at redemption comes from chasing a wild conspiracy theory championed by his estranged uncle.
Drama Teleplay Pilot
Dr. Nash
by Cassidy Nash Davis
DR. NASH is a one hour medical drama, Grey’s Anatomy meets The Knick, about Dorothy Nash, the world’s first female neurosurgeon, as she overcomes adversity, misogyny, and what it means to be a woman in 1930s Pittsburgh.
AMC One-Hour Pilot Award
Courier Girl
by Anna Zabel
Courier Girl follows Kasia as her already dangerous life in the Jewish ghetto of 1940 Warsaw becomes even more perilous when she takes on her greatest acting challenge yet: dyeing her hair blonde and enlisting as one of the Aryan-looking “courier girl” spies.
Comedy Teleplay Pilot
Crapshoot
by Drew McInturff
When LA’s most feared food critic watches his career implode from a Crohn’s disease diagnosis, he turns to the brilliant but unstable ex his reviews publicly destroyed to salvage his dream and chase redemption in the city that chews you up and shits you out.
Adult Comedy Animated Series Fellowship Presented by Starburns Industries
Time Traveling Cum Cops
by Austin Schauer
In a near future where sperm banks send special agents back in time to collect samples from history’s VIPs — “Very Important Papas” — a loose-cannon and her rookie, by-the-book partner struggle to finish their job to completion.
Josephson Entertainment Teleplay Award
Lady Em
by Cristina Pippa
A teenage descendant of Macbeth must navigate high school and family secrets when she discovers she has the power to fight demons and change the fate of her politically divided state.
TV Comedy Fellowship Sponsored by the Nickelodeon Writing Program
Medusa: An Animated Series
by Ruby Mainieri
At the IRIS Center for mythological misfits, Medusa takes a job as a therapist to outrun her past, but between city politics, backstabbing coworkers, and five bickering emotional support snakes, healing others might be her hardest curse yet.
Drama Teleplay Spec
Yellowjackets: Thicker than Water
by Cynthia He
Desperate to feed herself and her unborn child, Shauna discovers a taste for her own blood. Wracked with shame, she resists—until Lottie presents a brimming bowl of blood, freely given by her followers, luring Shauna toward the seductive power of the Wilderness.
Comedy Teleplay Spec
Abbott Elementary: Skip Skampi’s
by Scott Olsen
When a seafood chain with a reputation for sponsoring local schools opens a new restaurant up the block, the Abbott faculty realize just how far they’ll push themselves in the name of class supplies, building repairs… and half-off drinks for teachers after 6:00pm.
Short Screenplay
Did you have a Good Time?
by Kevin Talley
When an aimless college grad accepts her grandfather’s offer to bankroll any outing as long as he can tag along, their nights out transform into an unexpected education in fulfillment, purpose, and the importance of having a good time.
Stage Play
Shepherd
by Gregory Paul
After America’s second civil war, a single mother takes in a former insurrectionist through a government program run by an AI, only to discover that healing a broken nation may destroy her family.
Scripted Digital Series
String City
by Suemedha Sood
When a Broadway star winds up dead in a hotel room, there’s only one man for the case and that man is a bear: Ace McKay, Bear Private Detective.
Fiction Podcast
Dial it Up
by Philip Thorne & Oystein Brager
When a stranger calls from his girlfriend’s stolen phone, Doug finds himself trapped in a deadly game of manipulation, forced to complete increasingly absurd tasks to save his girlfriend’s life – all while confined to a single, harrowing phone conversation.
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