The winner of the New Directors Award and Audience Award 2026 is...
On the final day of Kosmorama — Sunday, March 8 — Kosmorama Trondheim International Film Festival announced the winners of this year’s New Directors Award and Audience Award. The winner of the jury’s New Directors Award was the Canadian-Hungarian film Blue Heron. The winner of the Audience Award was A Sad and Beautiful World.
New Directors Award 2026 - Blue Heron
Director: Sophy Romvari
The Jury's Statement
The winning film distinguishes itself through a rare blend of sensitivity and artistic clarity. Through the eyes of a child navigating the quiet tensions of a family in crisis, the film captures the fragile nature of memory, trauma, and belonging – with extraordinary nuance. The director crafts a work that is both intimate and formally daring, blending documentary textures with lyrical storytelling. The film’s restrained performances, atmospheric soundscape, and patient visual language invite the audience into a world where what is remembered, imagined, and felt become inseparable. For its emotional honesty, its subtle yet powerful exploration of family and migration, and its confident cinematic voice, the jury honors this remarkable debut that lingers long after the final frame and signals the arrival of an important new filmmaker. The Kosmorama 2026 New Directors Award goes to Sophy Romvari’s Blue Heron.
Honourable Mention - The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo
The jury's honourable mention goes to The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo.
In a remote mining town, a myth says that a single gaze can spread a deadly plague. This film begins with this haunting idea, to show how prejudice and secrets affect a community. It is a portrayal of an alternative family — a group of trans women in 1980s Chile who built a home of care and resistance during the AIDS crisis. By combining harsh desert landscapes with intimate, emotional interiors, the director turns a history of fear into a story of strength. For its empathetic vision and impressive visual style, an honorable mention goes to Diego Céspedes’ debut The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo.
The Audience Award - A Sad and Beautiful World
Director: Cyril Aris
About the film:
Nino and Yasmina are born just one minute apart as bombs fall over Beirut. They find and lose each other as children, only to reunite as adults and fall in love for real – seemingly destined by fate. Over three decades, we follow their lives in Lebanon, a microcosm of the country’s turbulent history. The central question is whether love can endure unrest and conflict, whether it is possible to build a family amid uncertainty, and whether hope can survive an unsafe everyday life.
This impressive fiction debut by director Cyril Aris, who comes from a documentary background, combines a socially engaged and ethical perspective with a sensually captivating aesthetic. He masterfully balances warmth and humor with melancholy and pain. The result is an epic love story that is also a realistic and continually relevant social commentary.
A Sad and Beautiful World had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award, and was Lebanon’s official submission for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.
Filmmakers of the Future
With the New Directors Award (NDA), Kosmorama has dedicated its competition program to the filmmakers of the future — the new voices in the global film world whom we believe will make a strong mark in the years to come.
In this program, it is not only the films that must be outstanding; the directors must also demonstrate that they possess something extra as storytellers and/or film artists.
The criterion is that the director must not have made more than three feature films. The festival’s programming committee has curated the films included in the competition program, and a professional jury selected the winner of the New Directors Award from among them.
First Year with an Expanded Audience Award
New this year was the further development and digitalization of the festival’s Audience Award. This year, audiences could choose their favorite among the films in the regular film program: all the films in the program sections New Directors, Between People, Society, Documentary, Side Glance, and Ramaskrik were part of the competition.
Excluded from the Audience Award were the opening film, the closing film, and films in the program sections Reprise, Retrospective, Culinary Cinema, Kosmokids, and Events.
The transition to a digital Audience Award has been a success, and many audience members have cast their votes via the digital voting form this week. We look forward to continuing with this format for the Audience Award in the years to come.
