The 34th African, Asian, and Latin American Film Festival comes to a close with the announcement of this edition’s official and special awards, and a warm invitation to join us again in 2026!
The Official Jury, composed of Pia Marais (President), Carolina Cavalli and Scandar Copti, awarded the €8,000 prize to the winner of the Feature Film Competition ‘Windows on the World’.
The Journalists’ Jury, made up of film critics from SNCCI (National Union of Italian Film Critics) — this year Fabrizia Centola (President), Alessandro Amato and Lorenzo Rossi — awarded the €2,000 Prize for Best African Short Film and the €1,000 Prize for Best Film in the EXTR’A Competition.
Official Prizes
City of Milan ‘Windows of the World’ Feature Film competition
Santosh, by Sandhya Suri | UK, India, France, Germany | 2024 | 120′
This year’s winning film drew us in with its quiet intensity, emotional restraint, and refusal to offer easy answers. It unfolds through the eyes of a woman navigating a system built to marginalize her—where power operates through silence, complicity, and force. The film’s strength lies in its unwavering gaze. It doesn’t look away from the daily realities of institutional misogyny, caste discrimination, and anti-Muslim bigotry. Instead, it offers a patient, compassionate look at those too often overlooked and erased both in life and cinema. This is a film as personal as it is political, as intimate as it is systemic. And for its courage, clarity, and beauty, we are honored to award Best Film to Santosh, directed by Sandhya Suri.
Special mentions
Yunan, by Ameer Fakher Eldin | Germany, Canada, Italy, Palestine, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia | 2025 | 124′
and
In the Summers, by Alessandra Lacorazza | USA | 2023 | 95′
SNCCI Critics Award for the Best Film in AFRICAN SHORT FILMS Competition
Lees Waxul, by Yoro Mbaye | Senegal, France, Belgium, Central African Republic | 2024 | 21′
Because kneading and baking bread becomes an act of rebellion. A small story, which is concrete and symbolic at one and the same time, capable of bringing out topics such as the conflict of genders, corruption, the relationship between the city and rural areas and the complexity of human relations, when they reveal social pressure.
Special mention
Pie dan lo, by Kim Yip Tong | Réunion, Mauritius | 2024 | 14′
SNCCI Critics Award for the Best Film in the EXTR’A Competition
Award offered by Terre des Hommes Italia
Apnea, by Claudia Cataldi, Elena Poggioni, Stefano Poggioni | Italia | 2024 | 60′
For the ability to restore the complexity of a story without rhetoric, but which is exciting, effective, lean, intolerable and with a fast rhythm; minimalist in its form and with the sound that is very carefully designed and with the animation which anticipates and summarises what is told. Viewers can only listen, glued to the stories.
Special mention
Vakhim, by Francesca Pirani | Italia | 2024 | 98′
Special Prizes
City of Milan Audience Award
Khartoum, by Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhag, Ibrahim Snoopy, Timeea Ahmed, Phil Cox | UK, Sudan, Germany, Qatar | 2025 | 80′
ACEC Award – Diocesi di Milano
Searching for Amani, by Debra Aroko, Nicole Gormley | USA, Kenya | 2024 | 80′
Through the personal story of the grief for the loss of a relative, the film succeeds in catalysing our attention on the dramatic picture of the worst drought that Kenya has suffered in the past 40 years. In the thrilling form of a documentary of investigation, the film constructs an authentic story of the determination of a boy who, fighting courageously to shed light on to the death of his father, brings us up to date on the disastrous consequences of climate change. For the sensibility and the intimacy with which the story is told.
Terre des Hommes Awards – Visioni Future
Best films promoting children and adolescents rights
Passing Dreams, by Rashid Masharawi | Palestine, France, Sweden | 2024 | 79′
A symbolic film which, through the naive eyes of a child, takes us to discover a territory where people’s lives are constrained in an increasingly oppressive cage, like that of his pigeon which has disappeared. From Jerusalem to Bethlehem and Haifa, the film is a poetic and dreamlike road movie which takes us into the tragedy of the Palestinian people without conceding anything to illusions. Only the humanity of the characters remains as an anchor to hold on to.
Special mention
Kaliz, by Irene Z’graggen | Italia | 2024 | 13′
Multimedia San Paolo / Telenova Award
The prize consists of acquiring the home-video distribution rights in Italy for an African short film.
Lees Waxul, by Yoro Mbaye | Senegal, France, Belgium, Central African Republic | 2024 | 21′
For the great lucidity and at the same time empathy in a story of family rivalry which becomes the metaphor of a society suffocated by the struggle for daily survival and the persistence of the patriarchy. The determination of the main female character who opens a traditional bakery to sell fresh bread is a powerful gesture of economic and cultural demands, as is her refusal to submit to a neocolonial system. The director, also the film’s producer, represents a generation of dynamic young filmmakers who, while not forgetting the lessons of great masters such as Sembène Ousmane, carry ahead a cinema anchored in the contemporary age.
CINIT Award – Cineforum Italiano
My Brother, My Brother, by Saad Dnewar, Abdelrahman Dnewar | Egypt, Germany, France | 2025 | 15′
For the intense and evocative story, enriched by a dreamlike sound design; for the ability to interweave opposite dimensions: cartoon and live shooting, dream and reality, reconstructed memories and tangible objects; for the originality and the delicacy of the tribute to a twin brother, who has passed away prematurely, with whom the project had been conceived.
University Jury Award
The award is assigned by a university jury composed of under-30 students from various Milanese universities, who select a feature film in competition. The jury’s activities are part of the Fuori per Festival project.
Yunan, by Ameer Fakher Eldin | Germany, Canada, Italy, Palestine, Qatar, Jordan, Saudi Arabia | 2025 | 124′
For the effectiveness with which the film shows exile, loss and the alienation of the self, for how it represents the use of the imagination as a refuge and the cultural and political uprooting through a dreamlike and symbolic dimension, the University Jury awards the prize to Yunan by Ameer Fakher al-Din.