Student Talent and Independent Vision Won Big at the 59th Humboldt International Film Festival

Red Carpet photos were possible. [Photo by Ryan Hutson]

Locally made film Climate Control, a metafictional comedy about a documentary filmmaker whose work is hijacked by an AI insisting on a love story – took Best of Festival honors Sunday night as the 59th Annual Humboldt International Film Festival (HIFF) wrapped up its closing Best of Fest screening at Arcata’s historic Minor Theatre. The evening celebrated seven award winners drawn from an international lineup of short films, judged by a trio of guest judges.  

HIFF, produced by students at Cal Poly Humboldt, has been running since 1967 – making it the longest-running student-led film festival in the world. The 59th Humboldt International Film Festival ran April 23–26, 2026, at the Minor Theatre in Arcata. 

The festival’s mission, as stated in this year’s program, is “to create a space for independent filmmakers to express themselves, free from the censorship of mainstream media,” with a particular focus on short films that inspire social and environmental change.

Guest Judges announced the winners to a full house. [Photo by Ryan Hutson]

Best Narrative: Genealogy of Violence – Dir. Mohamed Bourouissa (France)

French director Mohamed Bourouissa’s short drops viewers into a charged, intimate scene: a young man on a date with his girlfriend is stopped by plainclothes police for a routine identity check. What follows is a slow-burning methodical pat-down conducted beneath his girlfriend’s dismayed gaze. Bourouissa builds suspense slowly during a police encounter focusing on the tension and fear experienced by the subject 

Best Documentary: Night Out With Ronnie – Dir. Kabir Mehta (India)

Indian director Kabir Mehta follows a 70-year-old ex-playboy through the sun-bleached ruins of his ego, fantasizing a grand comeback that never arrives. What begins as a portrait of vanity gradually deepens into something deeply sad and more tender – a story of a life lived in denial, and a portrait of what it means to age without grace. Here, the judges recognized Mehta’s eye for documenting self-delusion masked as confidence.

Best Animation: Trading Cards – Dir. Radheya Jang (Australia/UK)

Australian/UK director Radheya Jang’s animated short follows a man traveling back in time to revisit his younger self, using the ritual of trading cards as a vehicle to explore identity, mental health, and the slow erosion of childhood innocence. A quiet gut-punch disguised as something nostalgic and playful – this one is a bit scary, and possibly disturbing as it touches the nerve of trauma disguised as adulthood.

Pablo Koontz Award for Best Experimental Film: Samba Infinito – Dir. Leonardo Martinelli (Brazil)

Set during Rio’s Carnival, Brazilian director Leonardo Martinelli’s film follows a street cleaner grieving the loss of his sister while navigating his work obligations amid the surrounding celebration. When he encounters a lost child, duty and sorrow converge in unexpected ways. A richly textured, colorful and emotionally layered piece that earned the Pablo Koontz Award for experimental film. 

Sara Ortega & Danica Frey helped to coordinate and moderate the event. [Photo by Ryan Hutson]

The Best Local Film award – sponsored by the Humboldt Del Norte Film Commission and Pro Cuts Editing – went to The Void, directed by Danica Frey, who also serves as one of HIFF 59’s co-directors. In the film, a young woman named Lucy discovers a void she can escape into and spends her birthday confronting her fraught relationship with her mother – and the painful choice of whether to cut her off entirely. That Frey pulled double duty as both a festival director and a winning filmmaker says something about the depth of homegrown talent here on the North Coast. The filmmaker was in attendance.

Ledo Matteoli Award for Best Immigrant Story: I Was There – Dir. Kamila Kuc (USA)

The Ledo Matteoli Award honors the best immigrant story in the festival lineup. This year it went to Kamila Kuc’s I Was There, in which Kuc herself steps into the stream of her family’s inherited history, blurring the lines between documentary, testimony, and fiction. Bearing witness alongside her Polish grandmother, the women testify to the reverberations that life stories carry across generations. Kuc was in attendance at the screening on Saturday night, which featured a short question and answer session following the film screening.

Best of Festival: Climate Control – Dir. Sarah Lasley (Humboldt County, USA)

The night’s top honor went to director Sarah Lasley’s Climate Control, a metafictional comedy in which a documentary filmmaker trying to tell a story about fossil fuel extraction is persistently thwarted by an AI agent that wants to tell a generic love story instead. Lasley – who was in attendance – flips the usual AI narrative on its head. Rather than a tool for clarity or assistance, artificial intelligence here becomes a distorting filter, overriding the human director’s vision at every turn and inserting its own flattened version of reality. 

In a moment when questions about AI and authentic storytelling feel impossible to avoid, Climate Control landed with particular resonance. It was, for this reporter, the most compelling film of the night – not because it had the easiest message to digest, but because it captured something true about the struggle to maintain a human point of view in an increasingly automated world – in the context of fighting the good fight’ so to speak, filmmakers are also fighting media itself to be able to tell the story of the fight, to begin with. Director Sarah Lasley and many of the film’s contributors were present, and erupted in cheers at the announcement.