Award List
THE FEATURE FILM JURY AWARDS
Cinéma du réel Grand Prix 2026
Funded by the Bibliothèque publique d’information (€ 5,000) and the Procirep (€ 3,000).
London by Sebastian Brameshuber
Jury statement: Simple and radical in its framing and form, this film depicts through small gestures of the characters that become eloquent, within their everyday refusals and doubts; while showing the importance of sharing. A film that is not rushed, showing how time can be generous.
Cinéma du réel International Award 2026
Funded by the association Les Amis du Cinéma du réel (5,000€).
Levers by Rhayne Vermette
Jury statement: For a film that uses a personal vision to explore space, light and shadow, textures and the constitutive matter of cinema. The singular narrative elements of this film carry forth a form of resistance of the Manitoban community that challenges us while sharing and showing its story without giving away its secrets.
Cnap Award for French films 2026
Funded by the Centre national des arts plastiques (5,000€).
A Blind Song by Stefano Canapa and Natacha Muslera
Jury statement: For a film that gives itself to the experience of perception through collectivity; and shared, intercultural discovery… this artisanal film navigates between the meaning of perceiving and hearing; through images and sounds; but also through a blind person’s singular experience, through words and singing.
Sacem Award 2026
Funded by La Sacem (1 000 €) and awarded to the composer of the original music of a feature film from the Competition.
A Blind Song by Stefano Canapa and Natacha Muslera
Music by Lionel Marchetti and Natacha Muslera
Jury statement: For original music that is not just there to accompany the images, but as a veritable artistic and collective act of listening and expression. The music in this film manifests itself within the cinematographic matter and coexists entirely along with the other sound elements, creating a whole body from the film.
Special Mention of the feature film jury 2026
The Rib of the Greater Bay Area by Zhou Tao
THE SHORT FILM AND FIRST FILM JURY AWARDS
First Film Loridan-Ivens Award 2026
Funded by Capi Films (€ 3,500).
Award: An Incomplete Calendar by Sanaz Sohrabi
Jury statement: Opening with a choir singing about what binds together the nations that have oil running beneath their soil, this film allows us to access the geopolitical promises of non-Western autonomy and the forces that sought to undermine it. Bracketed between the 1956 nationalisation of Iranian oil and the 1980 assassination of the oil minister, the film uses the magic of ‘soft montage’, archival research, stamps on empty envelopes, and the voices of lived experience to trace the fragile yet defiant bonds that once united the Global South. While modernist acoustic panels once vibrated with the OPEC choir in a Venezuelan concert hall, now they resonate with the filmmaker’s unanswered questions like a prayer mediating between the brutal present and the promises of solidarity.
Mention: The Cow’s Complaint by Mahdy Abo Bahat and Abdo Zin Eldin
Jury statement: Formally precise with a film language that arises organically and directly from its limitations, this film impressed us with the possibility to internalize a space where the quotidian becomes ritualistic and hypnotic
Short Film Award 2026
Funded by the Bibliothèque publique d’information (€ 2,500).
Local Sensations by Tulapop Saenjaroen
Jury statement: This year, we were lucky enough to find among the competing short films one that breaks new ground. Which doesn’t often happen. Drawing inspiration from the writings of Thai theoretician Chatri Prakitnonthakan on “How to Design a Modern Monument That Won’t Become a Shrine”, here is a film that embarked on a long-term (and quite joyful) project to unlearn our modern-day tendency to transform the tiniest space, the tiniest sign, into a totem image with excessive haste.
On the contrary, this film makes infinitesimal adjustments to the arrangement of spaces and sounds and, along the way, finds new relationships that are never authoritarian.
This is a precious anti-monument manifesto that has been sent to us from Thailand.
Tënk Short Film Award 2026
Funded by Tënk (500 € and acquisition of SVOD broadcasting rights on the platform Tënk).
Once Again by Skander Mestiri
Jury statement: Mixing distanced observation and an almost childlike curiosity, the film explores a world in which history is no longer written, it stutters. In this theatre of reenactment, the past becomes a mockery, the game devours memory. These gatherings, which blend fascist-tinged folklore and a morbid giddiness, reveal the exhaustion of the collective narrative in the post-history and post-truth era. Just below the surface of the disconcerting lightness of the protagonists and their insignia we find the desire for order and a death drive.
THE YOUNG JURY AWARDS
GNCR – Young Jury Award 2026
Supported by the GNCR – Groupement national des cinémas de recherche, and awarded to a feature film from the competition, it guarantees that the film will get the support of GNCR as its theatricla release on condition that a distributor acquires it and that the film gets an exhibition visa.
Award: An Incomplete Calendar by Sanaz Sohrabi
Jury statement: We award the GNCR 2026 Youth Prize to a film whose choral quality moved us deeply, drawing us in with its notes that resound with hope.
In a present marked by imperialist violence and Israeli aggression, this film allows us to breathe, and invites us to learn from the past in order to move forward, so that other forms of resistance may continue and rise up.
Mention: The Cow’s Complaint by Mahdy Abo Bahat and Abdo Zin Eldin
Jury statement: In addition to the main prize, the youth jury wishes to award a special mention to a film that captivated us with its interweaving of the political, the spiritual and the material aspects of our times. From radio waves to rich Sufi chants, from cows that hold your gaze to the invisible presences that can be sensed within them, the film creates a sensory experience. With this debut feature film, the directors are embarking on an experimental path that we wish to support.
THE LIBRARY JURY AWARDS
Library Award 2026
Funded by the DRAC Île-de-France (€ 2,500) and awarded to a film of more than 50 minutes from the International Competition. The awarded film is purchased by the Bibliothèque publique d’information for inclusion in the library’s Catalogue national – Les Yeux Doc
London by Sebastian Brameshuber
Jury statement: Among the diverse forms of ‘the real’, we have chosen to follow one particular path: that of a road movie diverted by economic and capitalist forces and shaped by the history of Europe’s flow. Feverish words are exchanged; a fragile hospitality is sought amidst solitude, despite trajectories that seem predetermined. By holding these tensions together, the film becomes a discreet allegory for a Europe riven by contradictions.
THE DIRECTION GÉNÉRALE DES PATRIMOINES ET DE L’ARCHITECTURE OF THE MINISTRY OF CULTURE AWARDS
Cultural Intangible Heritage Award 2026
Awarded and funded by the Direction générale des patrimoines et de l’architecture of the Ministry of Culture (€ 2,500) to a film from the Competition.
A Blind Song by Stefano Canapa and Natacha Muslera
Jury statement: Smuggling the pitch-black night from the theatre to the screen, with sound taking precedence over the visual, with cinema reinventing itself before our eyes and beneath our eyelids. A truly humanistic encounter: a letter read with one’s fingertips, a foreign language brought to life; becoming one’s true self whilst remaining fundamentally different. The learning and use of Braille is an intangible cultural inheritance.
THE BOIS-D’ARCY INMATES JURY AWARDS
Inmate Award 2026
Endowed by the Fondation Sophie Rochas Desfosse (1,000 €).
Hasta mañana si Dios quiere by Alejandro Egido
Jury statement: We award the Bois d’Arcy Inmates’ Prize to a film that is both violent and beautiful and which reminds us that each of us is a tiny source of warmth in the universe. While these two sisters grow old as their village fades away, we feel time passing, slipping away. In this film, every handshake is an event. The director’s discreet presence breathes new life into the existence of these two elderly women whose lives are now behind them.
THE CLARENS FOUNDATION FOR HUMANISM AWARDS
Clarens Award for Humanist Documentary Filmmaking 2026
Endowed by the Clarens Foundation for Humanism (€4,000) and awarded to a feature film from any of the festival’s categories.
Award: Relicto by Guillermo Quintero
Jury statement: For the way it artfully captures speech on film,
for the way it conveys a love of storytelling and narrative,
for the way it translates the power of fabulation into cinema…
Through a series of encounters and gathered words, the film paints a portrait of a man who has become a legend. With a gentle strangeness, the film takes us on the trail of the last Tininga Indian, Sixto Muñoz.
Through him, the film constitutes a form of resistance against the disappearance of an entire people and a language.
Mention: The Vanishing Point by Bani Khoshnoudi
Jury statement: The jury for the Clarens Prize for Humanist Documentary felt compelled to award a special mention to a film that strikes a delicate balance between personal narrative and the fate of an entire people.
The film brings to life a woman activist who was murdered in prison in 1988 at the age of 27 and whose body was never given back. This woman is embodied through the bodies of all the women who, after her, have continued to rise up against the mullahs’ regime. This film resonates particularly strongly with today’s repression, which is more brutal than ever.
MEDIAPART INTERNET USERS AND THE AUDIENCE JURY AWARDS
First Window Audience Award 2026
This award is funded by the CNC (€2,000), who buys the rights from the author.
Award: Todas las manos que solté by Laura Charа́
Jury statement: The “First Window” Audience Award is given to a film in which the filmmaker stretches out her hand, grasping for the memory of her mother, whilst caressing that of her grandmother, whose memory is fading. Memories are lost, the darkness spreads, what remains is an embrace.
Mention: Love Is by Liza Kozlova
Jury statement: The Audience Award jury has decided to give a special mention to a socially committed film that invites us to question our world through the circulation of shared images, whether freely accessible or clandestine. The shock between the harshness of the prison images and the phone conversations about a first love convey an immense humanity which we perceived as a political gesture…
PARISDOC AWARDS
Coup de cœur Orlando x Culori 2026
Award: L’Île by Sara Rastegar and Simone Pozzi
Jury statement: The Orlando Culori Award, is given to a land-become-film, with a spellbinding and explosive aesthetic that captivated us through its intensely human encounters. This project offers a panorama of humanity in a struggle that gave us home and inspires us when we think to tomorrow. A poetic film featuring larger-than-life characters, the indomitable island of Stromboli is presented in an intimate and truthful way that, to our knowledge, represents a first in cinema.
Mention: Dans la gueule de l’ombre by Mahsa Karampour
Jury statement: We have chosen to award a Special Mention to a film that obviously resonates in a very particular way amid the current wars in Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, and throughout the Middle East.
This beautiful story of a sister and her brother – which invites us into a powerful form of introspection on the intimate and the political – is elevated by the film’s great musicality, its editing skills, and the uncompromising tenderness of its gaze.
Route One/DOC Award 2026
Funded by the Cinémathèque du documentaire in the form of a contract with the project’s author (€2,000), corresponding to a pre-purchase of rights for its Images de la culture catalogue.
Le Roi déménage by Francesca Consonni
Jury statement: For a sister’s tender gaze on her brothers, attentive to the richness of their inner worlds, and for the humanism of her vision of the world around us; we have chosen to award a film that impressed us by the inventive and joyful approach of a young filmmaker who set her story at the cusp of reality.