Santa Fe New Mexican
Here's what movies earned awards at the Santa Fe International Film Festival
Santa Fe International Film Festival officials announced award winners in more than a dozen categories Tuesday after the event’s wealth of cinematic programing drew to a close this week.
With a growing profile in a city known for the arts and increasingly associated with filmmaking, the local film festival got underway Oct. 15. The 17th edition of the event opened with Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and closed Oct. 20 with James Vanderbilt’s Nuremberg. The festival brought 300 hours of movie screenings to various theaters around the City Different.
Nika and Madison, a Canadian crime thriller directed by Eva Thomas, notched a major win this year by claiming the Best Narrative Feature Award. The award, presented by filmmaking equipment company Panavision, includes a camera package valued at $60,000, a post-production package from Light Iron valued at $30,000 and a $1,000 cash prize from the Santa Fe Film Institute.
Notably, Dream Touch Believe — a movie about the inspiring story of Santa Clara Pueblo sculptor Michael Naranjo, who was blinded during the Vietnam War — earned the Best New Mexico Documentary Feature Jury Award.
All told, the awards represent more than $100,000 in cash and in-kind prizes.
Here are the awards in the 2025 Santa Fe International Film Festival:
Best Narrative Feature Jury Award: Nika and Madison,directed by Eva Thomas.
Best Documentary Feature Jury Award: Free Leonard Peltier,directed by Jesse Short Bull and David France.
Special Jury Award Documentary Feature: Steal This Story, Please!, directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal.
The latter film was “recognized by the jury for its fierce commitment to independent journalism, a biography of journalist Amy Goodman and her TV show Democracy Now, at a time when America’s first amendment and freedom of the press are being challenged like never before,” a news release from the festival stated.
Special Jury Award Documentary Feature: The Stringerdirected by Bao Minh Nguyen.
According to the news release, the film was “recognized by the jury for its rigorous investigation to reveal the true author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the ‘napalm girl’ that came to symbolize the horrors of the war in Vietnam, 55 years ago.”
Academy Award Qualifying Best Narrative Short Jury Award: Nightfaces, directed by Martin Winter and Stefan Langthaler.
Academy Award Qualifying Best Documentary Short Jury Award: All the Empty Rooms, directed by Joshua Seftel.
Academy Award Qualifying Best Animated Short Jury Award: Snow Bear, directed by Aaron Blaise.
Best Experimental Short Jury Award: Dieter, directed by Rolf Broennimann.
Best New Mexico Documentary Feature Jury Award: Dream Touch Believe, directed by Jenna Naranjo Winters.
Best New Mexico Narrative Feature Jury Award: In Our Blood, directed by Pedro Kos.
Best New Mexico Short Jury Award: Legend of Fry-Roti: Rise of the Dough, directed by Sabrina Saleha.
Best Indigenous Short Film Jury Award: Tiger, directed by Loren Waters.
Audience Choice Best Narrative Feature: The President’s Cake, directed by Hasan Hadi.
Audience Choice Best Documentary Feature: Steal This Story, Please!, directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal.
Audience Choice Best Narrative Short: My Kind of People,directed by Joe Picozzi.
Audience Award Best Documentary Short: What the River Knows, directed by Diego Riley and Will Buckley.
Audience Award Best Animated Short: Forevergreen, directed by Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears.
By Cormac Dodd
