On its first festival outing in Africa, the Asturian short film by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi takes the award for Best LGBTQIA+ Film in Durban — its eighth international award.
IUS of Time, the Asturian LGBTQ+ short film directed by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi, has won the award for Best LGBTQIA+ Film at the 3rd Power24 International Film Festival in Durban, South Africa. The prize was announced at the festival’s awards gala on Saturday, 22 August 2026, a day after the film held its African premiere there on 21 August.
IUS of Time award details
🏆 Award (Winner): Best LGBTQIA+ Film
🏅 Nominee: Best Music Score Film
🎬 Festival: 3rd Power24 International Film Festival
📍 City: Durban, South Africa
🗓 Awards gala: Saturday, 22 August 2026
IUS of Time: first African screening, and a first African award
IUS of Time screened in Durban on Friday 21 August, opening the film’s presence on the continent, and took the award for Best LGBTQIA+ Film the following night. Power24 describes itself as an inclusive festival built around filmmakers and stories from underrepresented communities, and its programme gives a central place to LGBTQI+ voices — a context that sits closely with the film’s own subject: an older gay man who has carried the weight of silence and rumour for decades in a small Asturian village. (The festival and the screening were covered in full in our selection announcement.)
At Power24 the film was also in competition for Best Music Score Film. Its score draws directly on passages from Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice (1762), a choice we explored in detail in that earlier piece.
The directors of IUS of Time
“That a story so bound to Asturias — to its villages, its landscapes and its way of life — can connect with audiences in places like Durban, Mumbai, Chicago or Paris is one of the most special things about this journey. A story can be deeply local and, precisely from there, find common ground with people living thousands of kilometres away,” say Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi.
For Xu Xiaoxi the South African award carries an added meaning: he studied Fine Arts at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, and the win brings the film to a country closely tied to his own artistic beginnings.
Eight awards, five continents
The Power24 prize joins a run of eight awards and distinctions. Earlier honours include the Director’s Choice Award at the 45th Thomas Edison Film Festival (United States), the Audience Award at the 24th Avilés Acción Film Festival, third place in the Audience Choice Award at the Beijing Queer Film Festival (China), and awards for Best Cinematography at the Silicon Valley Queer Film Festival (United States) and the Rural and Mountain Film Festival in Cervera de Pisuerga (Spain), along with recognitions at the Rochester International Film Festival (United States) and the Goitacá International Film Festival (Brazil).
The journey continues this autumn 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 — and, closer to home, at Piloña Alternativa in the Asturian countryside.
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 is a 25-minute fiction short shot entirely on location in Asturias, with dialogue in Spanish and Asturian.
