The Asturian short film lands in Africa for the first time, competing for Best LGBTQIA+ Film and Best Music Score Film at the 3rd Power24 International Film Festival in Durban.
IUS of Time, the Asturian LGBTQ+ short film directed by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi, has been selected for the 3rd Power24 International Film Festival, taking place from 21 to 23 August 2026 in Durban, South Africa. The selection marks the film’s first festival appearance on the African continent and brings its international journey to 70 festival selections across five continents.
With Durban, IUS of Time has now premiered in 29 countries, making it one of the Asturian fiction short films with the widest international run in recent years.
Produced by Almost Red Productions with the support of the Department of Culture, Language Policy and Sport of the Principality of Asturias and the Asturias Paraíso Natural Film Commission, IUS of Time arrives in Durban with two award nominations: Best LGBTQIA+ Film and Best Music Score Film.
The film will screen on Friday, 21 August, at the Academy Venue of Southern Sun Marine Parade in Durban, as part of the opening day’s international programme.
IUS of Time at Power24 — screening details
Power24: an inclusive film festival in Durban
Power24 International Film Festival defines itself as Africa’s premier disability-inclusive film festival, with a particular focus on filmmakers and stories from communities that remain underrepresented on screen.
Founded by South African actress Buhle Khumalo, the festival programmes work by women, people with disabilities, rural communities, emerging filmmakers, LGBTQI+ storytellers, young filmmakers and other underrepresented voices. According to the festival, more than 40% of participation is dedicated to people with disabilities.
Now in its third edition, Power24 brings together filmmakers, industry professionals and audiences connected with more than 65 countries. Its 2026 programme includes more than 70 film screenings over three days, masterclasses and panel discussions, industry networking and pitching sessions, sign-language interpretation and audio-described films.
The festival also presents awards in more than 27 categories. Its motto for 2026 is “The Power of the Story of the Voiceless.”
For IUS of Time, whose story centres on an older gay man who has spent much of his life carrying the weight of silence and rumours in a small Asturian community, that focus creates a particularly fitting context for its first African screening.
Two nominations in South Africa
Alongside its Official Selection, IUS of Time has received two nominations at Power24: Best LGBTQIA+ Film and Best Music Score Film.
The first connects directly with a festival journey in which LGBTQ+ festivals have played an important role, taking the film to audiences in countries including the United States, France, Poland, India, Mexico, Brazil, Germany and Bulgaria.
The nomination for Best Music Score Film recognises another dimension of the film: the music accompanying a story built around memory, landscape and the encounter between two generations.
The film’s soundtrack draws directly on Christoph Willibald Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice (1762), weaving passages from the work itself into the score. The choice is far from incidental: like IUS of Time, the opera turns on only two central figures, and its libretto lets love and death run through the meeting and parting of its protagonists across time, moving from material reality into a more symbolic, mythical territory.
In Gluck, the music carries the emotion beyond what is shown; that same prominence runs through the film, where love, death and the feelings around them matter more than the materiality of the images. The pastoral character of Gluck’s score also finds a natural echo in the Asturian landscapes of IUS of Time.
The awards are part of Power24’s three-day programme in Durban.
From Asturias to Africa: 70 festival selections across five continents
Power24 is the film’s first festival selection in Africa — the continent that completes its journey across all five.
With South Africa joining its international route, IUS of Time has now reached festivals on all five continents: Europe, the Americas, Asia, Oceania and Africa.
Since beginning its festival journey in 2025, IUS of Time has screened at festivals including the 53rd Huesca International Film Festival, the 34th Madrid Film Festival – PNR, the 63rd Gijón/Xixón International Film Festival (FICX), the 31st Chéries-Chéris in Paris, the 43rd Reeling Chicago LGBTQ+ International Film Festival and the 16th KASHISH Pride Film Festival in Mumbai.
The film has so far received seven awards and distinctions, including the Director’s Choice Award at the 45th Thomas Edison Film Festival in the United States, the Audience Award at the 24th Avilés Acción Film Festival, and awards for Best Cinematography at the Silicon Valley Queer Film Festival in the United States and the Rural and Mountain Film Festival in Cervera de Pisuerga, Spain.
A personal connection with South Africa
The South African selection also carries a particular personal significance for co-director Xu Xiaoxi.
Born in Chengdu, China, Xu studied Fine Arts at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa, where he became the first Chinese student to graduate from the university. He later continued his film studies in the United States, where he met Roberto F. Canuto at the New York Film Academy and began the collaboration that would eventually become Almost Red Productions.
For Xu, the arrival of IUS of Time in South Africa therefore brings the film back to a country closely connected with his own artistic education. More than a decade after Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi began making films together, a story created and shot in rural Asturias now reaches the country where part of Xu’s creative journey began.
A rural Asturian story travelling internationally
IUS of Time (IUS del tiempo) is a 25-minute Spanish fiction short film set in rural Asturias, with dialogue in Spanish and Asturian (amestáu).
At its centre are two men from different generations. Xuan, a former teacher and cheesemaker, lives in an increasingly depopulated village carrying the weight of rumours about his sexuality that have followed him for decades. Luca, a young photographer, arrives in the area while working on an artistic project. Their encounter gradually reveals unexpected connections between two apparently distant lives.
The film was shot entirely on location in Asturias — in the Picos de Europa, the Cabrales cheese caves and across the municipalities of Cabrales, Piloña and Onís, with its two main locations in the villages of Asiegu and Biedes. The landscape and the traditional process of cheesemaking form part of a story concerned with memory, identity, ageing and what remains unspoken between generations.
The film stars Manuel Pizarro and Pelayo Carrizo, alongside Andy Almar and Laura Ubach, and was written by Roberto F. Canuto, Xu Xiaoxi and Enrique Pérez Romero.
The journey continues
The arrival in South Africa comes during an especially active period for the film.
After its August screening in Durban, IUS of Time will continue its Spanish festival journey with appearances at two festivals that qualify short films for the Goya Awards: the 15th K-Lidoscopi Short Film Festival in Cullera, Valencia, and the 28th Octubre Corto – Arnedo Film Festival in La Rioja.
Closer to home, the film will also return to the Asturian countryside with a screening at Piloña Alternativa, an independent cultural event combining Asturian short films and alternative music.
Seventy selections after its festival journey began, a film rooted in a small rural community in northern Spain continues to find audiences in very different places. Durban adds a new continent to that route, while also bringing IUS of Time to a country with a personal connection to one of its directors.
Discover more about IUS of Time
- Official film page
- Complete festival selections and awards
- K-Lidoscopi Official Selection
- Watch the trailer
