Sony Future Filmmaker Awards Unveils 2026 Winners

Sony honoredyoung global filmmakers at the fourth annual Future Filmmakers Awards ceremony held on Thursday night on the Hollywood studio lot.

During a gala in the historic Scenic Arts Building, director Will Gluck presented the best fiction prize to Britain’s Jack Hughes for Deadheading, a story about a wife determined to use all means necessary to secure her terminally ill husband’s dream allotment garden after he is given just months to live.

In the non-fiction category, the prize went to Singapore’s Christine Seow for Two Travelling Aunties, which follows two fifty-something women trading conventional life for the open road. The award was presented byindie producer Milissa Kazuko Douponce, who also founded Summer & Company.

Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom director Justin Chadwick presented the animation prize to Scandinavian filmmakers Michelle Brøndum and Ida Melumfor Ovary-Acting, a stop motion animated film about a young woman stuck at her sister’s baby shower and forced to reflect on whether she wants to have children or not after unexpectedly giving birth to her reproductive organs.

Cuba’s Ana A. Alpizar earned the student film prize for Norheimsund, which centers on a long-distance romance with an older Norwegian man promising to lift a Cuban girl and her mother out of poverty, until the fantasy begins to crack. Yojiro Asai, senior general manager of the imaging marketing division at Sony Corp., presented the student prize.

The annual competition attracts global filmmaker entrants, with the winners chosen by a jury comprised of directors Gluck and Chadwick, Pascal Pictures’Rachel O’Connor and animation co-directorAdam Rosette.

The jury members said in a joint statement: “The winning films captivate, challenge, and resonate long after viewing. These are artists who command their craft with confidence, execute their vision without compromise, and observe the world with clarity and empathy. What distinguishes the winners, and the wider shortlist, is how far their stories reach – across borders, across cultures; across the full spectrum of human experience. Cinema remains the universal language, and these filmmakers demonstrate that its most essential voices are rising from every corner of the globe. It’s precisely filmmakers of this caliber that the Sony Future Filmmaker Awards were created to discover and to champion.”

The prize giving also saw Innocent Yama Lamido from Nigeria win this year’sFuture Formatcompetition, which challenges filmmakers to tackle a technical brief to explore bold and innovative storytelling. This year entrants submitted shorts created for vertical viewing, or a 9:16 aspect ratio.