Short Films Competition Awarded Messina Opera Film Festiva IX Edizione
dal 29 novembre al 7 dicembre 2025
Emi Mammoliti Prize for Best Short Film to Chloe’s Dream
For the perfect balance between cinema, music, and animation, fused into a mature and complete work from start to finish, capable of imparting a profound meaning to every artistic choice.
For the extraordinary use of baroque music, sung like an aria and rediscovered as new, which becomes the guiding thread shaping the entire film.
For the ingenious reinterpretation of the original score, offering a surprisingly fresh way of using the music, transforming it into a soundtrack that is perfectly aligned with and respectful of its identity.
For an experimental and coherent animation style, where the meeting of drawing and live-action footage finds impeccable balance, enriched by black and white that amplifies poetry and visual cohesion.
A work distinguished by courage, harmony, and extraordinary originality: the jury awards the Emi Mammoliti Prize for Best Short Film to Chloe’s Dream, directed by Jérôme Erhart, Jessica Poon, and Sylwia Szkiladz.
UniversoMe student Jury Prize to Carmen
For successfully combining opera with themes of extraordinary relevance today, using a young, innovative language capable of speaking to new generations. The jury particularly appreciated the narrative intertwining in which fiction and reality blend, creating a powerful and profoundly contemporary story. The UniversoMe student jury awards the prize to Carmen, directed by Ximena Esparragoza.
Prize for Best Performance to Laura Giordani for Medea
For an interpretation capable of carrying the entire narrative weight on its own on screen, with a pure, credible, and deeply authentic stage presence.
For the ability to combine self-irony and humility, offering the audience a portrait of genuine vulnerability that becomes an act of courage and a sign of great artistic maturity.
For having maximized a fifteen-minute intense and measured performance, immersing herself completely in the role.
And for reinterpreting a traditionally dramatic figure like Medea with surprising lightness and irony, giving her an unprecedented and contemporary dimension, the jury awards the prize for Best Performance to Laura Giordani for Medea, directed by Giovanni Maria Currò.
Jury special Prize to Chinese Laundry,
For a brilliant and intelligent screenplay capable of naturally recalling Woody Allen’s sophisticated humor while maintaining an original and surprising voice in narrative development.
For the tight pacing and excellent editing work, which sustain a storytelling that is always lively and never predictable.
For the construction of a world recreated with such care and verisimilitude that ordinary environments are transformed into places of genuine narrative immersion.
For the ability to introduce us not merely to actors, but to credible, complex, and human characters.
And for a truly operatic narrative structure, where every element contributes harmoniously to the whole, giving rise to a film that, with elegance and lightness, simply makes us feel good: the jury awards the special prize to Chinese Laundry, directed by Giorgio Arcelli Fontana.