IFFO 2025 Audience Award Winners

The IFFO Audience Awards are voted on by attendees during the Festival.

Feature Film Audience Award

The Penguin Lessons
Director: Peter Cattaneo

Short Film Audience Award

One Day This Kid
Director: Alexander Farah

Feature Film Honourable Mention

L’histoire de Souleymane
Director: Boris Lojkine

Short Film Honourable Mention

Café des cauchemars
(Nightmare Café)
Directors: Frida Symons-Swann, Nyah Clarke

The International Film Festival of Ottawa (IFFO) brings the world’s best cinema to Canada’s Capital for its fifth edition.

This year’s Festival provides cinephiles with an eclectic mix of films that have won awards and made waves in the international film circuit over the past year. In IFFO’s Official Selection, programmers curated 22 Canadian and international feature films and select a new Canadian short film to accompany each feature screening. Other film programs in the Festival include the established CFI series Canadian Masters, getting in-depth discussions with some of Canada’s greatest and most prolific filmmakers, and IFFO series The Gaze, which brings the audience into the discussion about diverse representation on screen. IFFO’s industry conferences address emerging and mid-level film professionals at Screen Summit and examine issues of preservation, restoration, distribution, and exhibition at SAVE AS.

Thank you to our sponsors

Telefilm Canada

Ontario Arts Council

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see all of our 2025 sponsors