Winners of the second e-flux Film Award

e-flux Film Award is pleased to announce the winners of its second edition. 

The jury has awarded first prize to Noor Abed for A Night We Held Between (2024, 30 minutes), second prize to Taiki Sakpisit for The Spirit Level (2023, 20 minutes), and an honorary mention to Anna Scherbyna for Scales (2024, 13 minutes).

This year, we are also happy to introduce the e-flux Prize for Cinematic Ingenuity, awarded independently by e-flux to a filmmaker who exhibits a uniquely visionary approach to the art of image production. The inaugural award goes to Maryam Tafakory for Mast-del (2023, 17 minutes).

This year’s award ceremony will be held in New York at e-flux Screening Room on Thursday, January 16, 2025 at 7pm, featuring screenings of the awarded films and introductions from the award recipients. Get tickets for the award ceremony here. 

We also look forward to special screenings of the shortlisted films, to take place in two parts on Saturday, January 25, 2025 at 3pm and 5pm. Please stay tuned for further details.

Shortlisted films
Dhiaa Biya, What else grows on the palm of your hands? (2023, 16 minutes)
Kara Ditte Hansen, Semi-Precious (2024, 15 minutes)
Eitan Efrat and Sirah Foighel Brutman, Vents Violents (2024, 20 minutes)
Minki Hong, Paradise (2023, 30 minutes)
Hey-Yeun Jang, live/leave (2024, 14 minutes)
Kyllachy, Insignificant Specks of Dust in a Tapestry of Stars (2024, 8 minutes)
Moojin Brothers, Three Worlds’ Dialogue (2024, 11 minutes)

The 2024 jury was comprised of Saodat  Ismailova, Shana Moulton, and Elena Vogman. The 2024 pre-selection committee members, Lukas Brasiskis, Dmitry Frolov, and Steff Hui Ci Ling, presented a shortlist of ten films for the jury’s consideration, selected from an inspiring array of over 800 moving-image works. 

e-flux extends its gratitude to all of the artists and filmmakers who entered their work for consideration in this year’s edition, with congratulations to the winners and the shortlisted.

Read more about the e-flux Film Award here.

About the Awardees
Noor Abed (1988, Palestine) is an interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker. She works at the intersection of performance and film. Through a process of image-making, her works create situations where social possibilities are both rehearsed and performed. Abed attended the Whitney Independent Study Program in Νew York in 2015–16, and the Home Workspace Program (HWP) at Ashkal Alwan, Beirut in 2016–17. She was a fellow at the Raw Material Company in Dakar in 2019, and in 2020, she co-founded, with Lara Khaldi, the School of Intrusions, an independent educational collective in Ramallah, Palestine. Abed was an assistant curator in documenta fifteen, Kassel 2021–22, an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam 2022–24, and was awarded the Han Nefkens Foundation/Fundació Antoni Tàpies Video Art Production Grant in 2022. Her book Stars at Midday was published in October 2024.

Taiki Sakpisit is a filmmaker and visual artist based in Bangkok, renowned for his innovative approach to storytelling and his profound exploration of Thailand’s complex history. Sakpisit unpacks the nation’s turbulent past, infusing his films with a subtle yet resounding political commitment. His works delve into the underlying tensions, conflicts, and anticipations of contemporary Thailand, meticulously crafted through precise and sensorially overwhelming audio-visual assemblage. Utilizing a diverse array of sounds and images, Sakpisit creates immersive experiences that challenge conventional narratives. His feature-length film The Edge of Daybreak won the FIPRESCI prize at the International Film Festival Rotterdam. His recent works have been exhibited at the fourteenth Gwangju Biennale, the Museum of Contemporary Art Busan, the 2024 Bangkok Art Biennale, and the fourteenth Mercosur Biennial.

Anna Scherbyna is a Ukrainian-born artist, filmmaker, and curator based in Berlin. Drawing from her background in painting, Scherbyna integrates a painterly perspective into her filmmaking, expanding her exploration of perceptual modalities to delve beyond the surface of the image. At the intersection of disciplines in her cinematic exploration, she seeks to uncover the unseen and unspoken. Her work consistently examines the margins of representation, embracing disruption and fragmentation as methods to challenge hegemonic narratives.

Maryam Tafakory, born and raised in Iran, works with film and performance. Solo screenings/exhibitions of her work include MoMA (New York), BOZAR (Brussels), National Gallery of Art (Washington DC), Academy Museum (Los Angeles), Museum of the Moving Image (New York), and LUX London, among others. Selected group events include Tate Modern (London), Cannes’ Directors Fortnight, New York Film Festival, Locarno Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, BFI London Film Festival, and Anthology Film Archives (New York). She was awarded the Gold Hugo at the 58th Chicago International Film Festival, the Tiger Short Award at the 51st Rotterdam IFF, and the Best Experimental Film Award at the 70th and 71st Melbourne International Film Festival. She was the 2024 winner of the Film London Jarman Award.

About e-flux Film Award
e-flux Film Award is a prize for artists’ films that push the boundaries of the aesthetic and critical potential of moving images in the age of planetary circulation of information. Selected by a jury of distinguished artists, filmmakers, and film selectors and curators from open submissions, it is awarded annually, with three awards given: a first prize of 3000 USD, a second prize of 2000 USD, and an honorable mention. Inaugurated in the second edition, the e-flux Prize for Cinematic Ingenuity is awarded independently by the e-flux team to honor one filmmaker from each edition for their uniquely visionary approach to the art of image production. e-flux Film Award welcomes submissions from both emerging and established artists who subvert and redefine traditional narrative forms and broaden our understanding and perception through the mastery of both film form and content. “How does one see what is hidden behind the images?,” Harun Farocki once asked. In line with e-flux Film’s programming that aims to challenge the expectations established by the commodification of moving-image art and to facilitate the critical discussion of artists’ films, e-flux Film Award is committed to recognizing works that deviate from the dominant and conventional regimes of visibility providing insightful and critical perspectives on today’s world.

For more information, contact program [​at​] e-flux.com.