The Sundance Institute announced the winners of the 2025 Short Film Program at the Short Films Awards Ceremony in Park City on Jan. 28.
"The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing," a short film by director Theo Panagopoulos, won the grand jury prize. The film won the prize for its “timely, urgent, and beautiful examination of colonialism and a moving reclaiming of history through the use of archival footage,” according to the jury citation.
Panagopoulos, a Greek-Lebanese-Palestinian filmmaker and Ph.D. researcher based in Scotland, created "The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing" after discovering Scottish archival footage of Palestinian wildflowers, according to the film’s description.
The film has won awards at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, London Short Film Festival, International Documentary Festival Amsterdam and more.
Sundance Film Festival showcased 57 short films and 88 feature-length films. The short films shown at the festival were curated from more than 11 thousand submissions, according to the press release.
The Sundance Institute awarded other short films, recognizing "Trokas Duras" in the U.S. Fiction category, "Grandma Nai Who Played Favorites" in the International Fiction category, "We Were The Scenery" in the Nonfiction category and "Como si la tierra se las hubiera tragado" in the Animation category.
“Each year we are fortunate to present so many impressive shorts,” Mike Plante, Sundance Film Festival Senior Programmer, Short Film, said. “Filmmakers bring us their distinctive visions from around the world, whether for entertainment or enlightenment and often both.”
The short film jury, consisting of Kaniehtiio Horn, Maggie Mackay and Kibwe Tavares, awarded two films’ directors special awards for directing.
May Kindred-Boothby was awarded the Short Film Special Jury Award for Animation Directing for the film "The Eating of an Orange," and Loren Waters was awarded the Short Film Special Jury Award for Directing for the film "Tiger."
Sundance Film Festival often serves as a jumping-off point for films to reach new audiences, according to Plante.
“We aim to bring new audiences to their work, especially as most of the filmmakers are attending Sundance for the first time,” he said. “Congratulations to the award winners, whose films demonstrate the powerful artistic talent at the festival.”
Other popular films that were showcased at Sundance include "Whiplash," "Hereditary" and "Napoleon Dynamite," among others.
Short films are films with a running time of 50 minutes or less, according to the Sundance Institute website. Applications for the 2025 festival opened May 23, 2024.
When applications open for the 2026 festival, more information on submitting films can be found on the institute’s website.