IUS of Time goes back to Piloña two weeks after its screening at Festival Piloña Alternativa. On Saturday 5 September 2026, at 12:00, the film screens at the Antiguu Balneariu de Borines, in the Especial Curtiometraxes session of La Benefílmica, the Muestra de Cine de Piloña that La Benéfica holds from 4 to 6 September, with peripheral activities on 1 and 5 September.

The screening also comes two weeks after the film won Best LGBTQIA+ Film at the 3rd Power24 International Film Festival in Durban, its first award in Africa and the eighth of its circuit. Between Durban and Borines there is a straight line: the story that travelled to South Africa was filmed in these meadows, in these houses, with this light.

La Benefílmica: taking cinema out of the theatre and into the praos

La Benefílmica is organised by a group of neighbours of the council who work professionally in the audiovisual sector, and is hosted by La Benéfica de Piloña. The stated idea is to take cinema out of the screening rooms and spread it across the territory: half the programme happens indoors, in the Benéfica theatre in L’Infiestu, and the other half outdoors, in praos where the audience is asked to bring their own chair — ¡trai la siella!

The three days are built as three journeys, titled in Asturian: Un viaxe universal (Friday 4), Un viaxe feríu (Saturday 5) and Un viaxe ocultu (Sunday 6), with screenings in Vegarrionda, Antrialgo, Borines and the recreational area of La Cueva. Every session works on taquilla inversa: admission is free and each person contributes what they consider fair afterwards.

The showcase is run with Estamos de Cine, the itinerant cinema service of Muchofoco en lo rural, and counts on Laboral Cinemateca, the Asturias Paraíso Natural Film Commission and, for the Borines session, Borines Manantial de Cultura. Almost Red Producciones collaborates with the showcase by providing IUS of Time for the Borines session on 5 September.

Screening details:

• Film: IUS of Time (IUS del tiempo) · Spain · 2025 · 25 min · Drama, Rural, LGBTIQ+
• Date: Saturday, 5 September 2026
• Time: 12:00
• Venue: Antiguu Balneariu de Borines, Piloña, Asturias
• Session: Especial Curtiometraxes · La Benefílmica
• Dates of the showcase: 4–6 September 2026
• Admission: taquilla inversa (pay what you consider), until capacity is reached
• Organised by: La Benéfica de Piloña

Three shorts at the old spa of Borines

The Borines session brings together three short films tied to the council: Nana Dee (Momo Willet and Marta Sniezek, 2023), Cases (Jandro Llaneza, 2025) and IUS of Time (Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi, 2025). An hour earlier, at 11:00, the same venue opens the exhibition and art market Artistes Beneficos, with works on sale at reduced prices.

The venue is not a neutral choice. The session runs with Borines Manantial de Cultura, in a building known across Asturias for the spa and the mineral water that carry the name of the village. Screening short films there says something about what the whole showcase is doing: using the buildings the council already has, and putting people back inside them.

Piloña, a setting of IUS of Time

A large part of IUS of Time was filmed in Piloña. The shoot used El Chigre, the bar-shop in Biedes; a traditional stable in Sevares; and a 17th-century rural manor house in Biedes, still furnished with pieces from the Napoleonic period, which became the home of Xuan, the older of the two protagonists. Some of the film’s best-known images were shot at the former Cándido San Miguel school in San Román.

The production had the backing of Piloña Town Council, the Asturias Paraíso Natural Film Commission and the Department of Culture of the Principality of Asturias.

A building that was already a cinema

La Benéfica de Piloña was built in L’Infiestu in 1926 as the headquarters of a mutual aid society. For two decades its 400 square metres worked as a theatre, a dance hall, a cinema and a meeting place. The society dissolved in 1946 and the building went through other lives — a sweet factory, a car park — until it fell into ruin.

In 2021 the musician Rodrigo Cuevas, together with Sergi Martí and Nacho Somovilla, set up an association that took the old name, bought the wreck of the building and turned it into a venue for live arts and community work in a council that keeps losing people. Cuevas, born in Oviedo and winner of Spain’s Premio Nacional de las Músicas Actuales in 2023, has put the aim in a single idea: culture is what creates territory. The Asturian language is part of that, which is why the whole programme of La Benefílmica is written in llingua.

A hundred years after the building opened, a film shot a few kilometres away screens under the same project.

Asturian in the detail, and understood everywhere

IUS of Time follows Luca, a young photographer, and Xuan, an ageing cheesemaker who has spent his life hiding his homosexuality under the pressure of a small community. The film is Asturian in its landscape, its work, its silences and its way of speaking, and it has been read without difficulty in places that have nothing to do with the Cantabrian mountains.

Its route runs across five continents and 29 countries, with more than 70 festival selections and eight awards: the Director’s Choice Award at the 45th Thomas Edison Film Festival, Best Cinematography at the 4th Silicon Valley Queer Film Festival, the Piedad Isla Award for Best Cinematography at the 3rd Rural and Mountain Film Festival of Cervera de Pisuerga, the Audience Award of the Asturias section at the 24th Avilés Acción Film Festival, and now Best LGBTQIA+ Film at the 3rd Power24 in Durban.

It has also screened at the 31st Chéries-Chéris in Paris, the 43rd Reeling in Chicago and the 16th KASHISH Pride Film Festival in Mumbai. In Asturias it took part in the Asturies short film selection of the 63rd FICX, the Xixón International Film Festival.

Ahead, the film continues on the Spanish circuit with the Goya-qualifying 15th K-Lidoscopi in Cullera and the 28th Octubre Corto in Arnedo. Before that, it stops at Borines, a few kilometres from where it was filmed.

More information

• Official page of IUS of Time
• Complete list of festival selections and awards
• IUS of Time wins Best LGBTQIA+ Film at Power24 (South Africa)
• IUS of Time at Festival Piloña Alternativa
• La Benefílmica programme at La Benéfica de Piloña
• La Benéfica de Piloña on Instagram
• La Benéfica de Piloña on Facebook
• Watch the official trailer

Cover photo: analogue behind-the-scenes photograph by Elmer Guevara, with Manuel Pizarro as Xuan. © Almost Red Producciones.

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

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.

Discover more about IUS of Time

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

Sunset in Paris (Atardecer en París) — the 10-minute LGBTQ+ short film directed by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi and produced by Almost Red Productions — has been selected by the ICAA (Instituto de la Cinematografía y de las Artes Audiovisuales) for Aula Corto, Spain’s official educational short film platform.

Through Aula Corto, Sunset in Paris becomes available not only to schools throughout Spain, but also to Spanish educational centres abroad through the “Acción Educativa de España en el Exterior” programme. The selection significantly expands the film’s audience beyond traditional festival circuits, allowing it to reach students, teachers and educational communities in different countries and cultural contexts.

For us, it opens a chapter we hadn’t imagined when we made this film. Until now, Sunset in Paris had lived almost exclusively in the festival world. Now it’s going into classrooms.

What Is Aula Corto — and Why This Selection Matters

Aula Corto is the educational platform created by Spain’s Ministry of Culture, through the ICAA, in collaboration with Siena Educación. Its premise is simple: the short film as the only protagonist in the classroom. The platform currently offers a catalogue of 66 short films from recent years — across fiction, animation and documentary — available for free to registered teachers at primary, secondary, bachillerato and vocational training levels across Spain and at Spanish schools abroad.

Each film comes with a dedicated teaching guide (guía didáctica) with specific activities designed to help teachers get the most out of the screening — whether for values education, audiovisual literacy, or simply as a starting point for conversation. Teachers register for free using their school email address, and each school can have as many registered users as it has teachers.

It is, in other words, a serious institutional infrastructure for bringing Spanish cinema into education. Being part of that catalogue — alongside films awarded at the Goya Awards and screened at major Spanish festivals — is not a minor thing.

Sunset in Paris (Atardecer en París) was selected directly by the ICAA for the film’s cinematic quality and the educational value of its content. On the platform it is recommended for 4º de ESO, Bachillerato and Vocational Training (FP) levels, and catalogued under three UN Sustainable Development Goals — SDG 3 (Health and Wellbeing), SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities) — with competencies in citizenship and personal and social development.

When we read that classification, something clicked. SDG 3 because the film is about emotional health — about what happens inside two young people when they finally allow themselves to feel something they’ve been carrying without a name. SDG 10 because the inequality it addresses isn’t economic: it’s the quieter, more intimate inequality of growing up in a world that hasn’t yet made room for who you are. And SDG 4 — quality education — because that’s exactly what cinema can do when it’s used well: teach empathy, teach ambiguity, teach the courage to sit with a question rather than rush to an answer.

The story Sunset in Paris (Atardecer en París) tells is precisely the kind that often goes untold in a classroom. Which is, perhaps, exactly why it belongs there.

A Short Film Born as a Sketch

Sunset in Paris carries a subtitle that gives away its origins: Sketches of IUS II. It was not conceived as a standalone work. It was conceived as a tool.

During the extended development process of IUS of Time — the 25-minute LGBTQ+ drama that has since gathered more than 60 international festival selections and 7 awards — Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi identified the need to explore the emotional world of Luca, the film’s young protagonist, before the main shoot began. The result was two short films made as preparatory exercises: Blow Down (Sketches of IUS I) and Sunset in Paris (Sketches of IUS II). Both were completed and edited by the end of 2024, alongside IUS of Time itself.

What none of them anticipated was that these sketches would develop a life of their own.

Sunset in Paris premiered at the 62nd FICX – Gijón International Film Festival in November 2024, in the Asturies Curtiumetraxes section — the festival’s dedicated showcase for Asturian short cinema. That premiere placed a film made as a preparatory exercise in front of one of Spain’s most historically significant film festivals.

The Story: A Mountain, a Game, and Something That Needed to Surface

During a quiet afternoon on a mountain in Asturias, two young friends — Luca and Ana — play a game of “Truth or Dare.” The rules are simple. The conversation is not. Slowly, through challenges and confessions, what begins as play becomes something harder to name: a recurring dream that resurfaces, an attraction that refuses to stay buried, a desire that neither character has yet been able to speak aloud. Paris appears in the background — as a possibility, as a threshold, as the place where a different life might begin.

The film doesn’t resolve what it opens. We didn’t want it to.

“The game is part of life, and often, life reveals itself through play. The two teenagers at the heart of this story stand on the threshold of discovery — when everything feels possible, when words flow freely, when play is still, almost exclusively, the essence of existence.” — Roberto F. Canuto & Xu Xiaoxi

Where It Was Made: Monte Cayón and an 18th-Century Attic

The film was shot in a single intensive day in the municipality of Piloña, Asturias. Exterior scenes were filmed on Monte Cayón — a mountain known for its sweeping, hard-to-reach views over the Asturian landscape — where shooting began in the afternoon to capture the warm light of the setting sun. Once darkness fell, the crew moved indoors to the attic of an 18th-century house in Biedes, where the night added a quality of quiet tension to the more intimate sequences.

The small production team deliberately prioritised spontaneity. Improvisation was encouraged in several of the dialogues. The camera began with close-ups — capturing proximity, small gestures, the unspoken — and gradually opened to wider shots as the emotional landscape between the two characters shifted. The Asturian landscape in Sunset in Paris is not backdrop. It is, as in all Almost Red films, an active presence: the mountain as mirror, the attic as confession booth, the darkness as permission.

The Cast: Two ESAD Graduates, One Shared Universe

Pelayo Carrizo plays Luca — the same character he would go on to play in IUS of Time. Born and raised in Asturias, Pelayo graduated from the Superior School of Dramatic Arts of the Principality of Asturias (ESAD) and has been a regular collaborator with Almost Red Productions since his film debut in 2021. His theatre credits include work with Factoría Norte and Susana Gudín Producciones, and tribute productions for the Fundación Princesa de Asturias. The continuity of his presence across the IUS universe — from sketch to feature short — gives the character a coherence that was not scripted so much as lived.

Paula Lasheras plays Ana. Originally from the province of Burgos, she completed her studies at ESAD Asturias in 2024 — the same year this film was made. A multidisciplinary artist — actor, dancer, figure skater, singer. What Paula brings to Ana is hard to name precisely — which is fitting, because Ana is a character who resists being pinned down. She listens with her whole body. Her vulnerabilities surface without announcement. It was exactly what the scene needed.

Festival Journey: From FICX to an International Queer Circuit

The film’s initial distribution was handled by Nueru Distribución, an Asturian short film distributor, during its first year on the festival circuit. It is currently distributed by Almost Red Distribution. Since its premiere at the 62nd FICX in 2024, Sunset in Paris has built a steady festival presence:

• 62nd FICX – Gijón International Film Festival (Spain, 2024) — Asturies Curtiumetraxes Section
• XI Cortogijón Short Film Festival (Spain, 2025) — La Muestrona Section · 🏆 Audience Award for Best Short Film
• III Certamen Cinematográfico Amigos de Ribadesella (Spain, 2025) — 🏅 Finalist, Atalaya Award for Best Short Film
• IV Oriéntate – Asturian Film Festival of Llanes (Spain, 2025) — Oriéntate Official Section
• IX CINESAN Short Film Festival (Spain, 2025) — Asturias Section
• 47th Semana de Cine de Lugo (Spain, 2025) — Official Section
• 12th International Queer Film Festival Playa del Carmen (Mexico, 2025) — Official Section

Its selection at Playa del Carmen brought the film its first international screening and its first LGBTQ+ film festival outside Spain. The Aula Corto selection now adds a different kind of reach: not a festival audience of cinephiles, but classrooms across the country.

A Film Within a Universe

Sunset in Paris does not stand alone. It is part of a creative ecosystem that Almost Red Productions has been building across three interconnected short films.

Blow Down (Sketches of IUS I) was the first preparatory exercise — exploring a different dimension of the same emotional territory. Sunset in Paris came second. And IUS of Time is the work they made possible: a 25-minute rural Asturian drama about memory, silence and intergenerational desire that has become one of the most internationally circulated Asturian fiction short films in recent years, with more than 60 international festival selections across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Oceania, and 7 awards — including the Director’s Choice Award at the 45th Thomas Edison Film Festival (USA), Best Cinematography at the 4th Silicon Valley Queer Film Festival (USA), and the Audience Award at the 24th Avilés Acción Film Festival (Spain).

That the sketch has now found its way into Spain’s classrooms, while the film it prepared for continues to travel the world, feels like the natural order of things.

About Almost Red Productions

Almost Red Productions is the company Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi founded to make the films they needed to make. Roberto is from Gijón; Xu is from Chengdu. They met through cinema and have been making films together since 2008 — in Los Angeles, in China, and now in Asturias. Their previous short film Sunken Plum travelled to more than 50 international festivals, including Raindance (London), Seminci (Valladolid), FICX (Gijón), the Málaga Film Festival and Outfest (Los Angeles), and won the Silver Caravel at the Cartagena Film Festival. Sunset in Paris is part of the same universe as IUS of Time — a film that has since become one of the most internationally circulated Asturian fiction short films in recent years.

Official page: Sunset in Paris →

IUS of Time — the film this was a sketch for →

Blow Down — Sketches of IUS I →

About the directors →

Aula Corto educational page →

The short film has been officially selected for the Gay Shorts 2026 program, which brings together international short works exploring contemporary queer storytelling. The screening will take place on May 7, 2026, at 6:00 PM at The Pivotonian Cinema in Geelong, Victoria.

Founded as a non-profit, community-driven initiative, the Geelong Pride Film Festival runs from April 30 to May 10, 2026, and presents a wide program of feature films and short film sections across the Geelong region, celebrating diverse identities, experiences, and narratives within global queer cinema.

IUS of Time within the international queer festival circuit

Set in rural Asturias, northern Spain, IUS of Time follows an encounter between a young photography student and a reclusive cheesemaker, leading to an unexpected emotional connection.

The film continues to strengthen its international presence through its selection at the Geelong Pride Film Festival, expanding its connection with global queer audiences and international programmers.

Its subtle exploration of identity, memory, and emotional connection, combined with its rural setting, has helped the film resonate across diverse cultural contexts.

More about IUS of Time on its official page.

Its inclusion in the Gay Shorts 2026 program highlights its place within contemporary LGBTIQ+ cinema and a broader dialogue on queer storytelling that transcends geographical boundaries.

An expanding international festival journey

This latest selection marks a new milestone in the international journey of IUS of Time, extending its presence to Oceania after screenings at internationally recognized festivals including the 53rd Huesca International Film Festival (Oscar/Goya qualifier, Spain), 43rd Reeling: Chicago LGBTQ+ Film Festival (USA), 31st Chéries-Chéris (France), and 63rd FICX Gijón (Spain).

The film has been featured in a wide range of international contexts, highlighting its ability to connect with diverse audiences through its intimate storytelling and universal themes. Its growing trajectory reflects not only critical recognition, but also a sustained interest from programmers focused on contemporary queer cinema and independent filmmaking.

Recent screenings in North America, at the 27th ReelOut Queer Film Festival (Kingston, Ontario) and in Europe at the 17th LGBT+ Film Festival Poland, continue to build the film’s global visibility.

With over 50 international festival selections and 7 awards to date—including Director’s Choice Award at the 45th Thomas Edison Film Festival 2026 (USA) and Best Cinematography at Silicon Valley Queer Film Festival (California)—IUS of Time stands as one of the most internationally visible independent queer short films from Spain in recent years.

A film shaped by memory, time and layered storytelling

IUS of Time emerged from a creative process that evolved organically, with the initial concept expanding into a more complex narrative structure through collaboration and experimentation.

Developed alongside writer and associate producer Enrique Pérez Romero, the screenplay went through an extensive process of refinement, combining narrative construction with visual and performative exploration. Early exercises in character development and cinematic language led to the creation of two companion pieces, Blow Down and Sunset in Paris, conceived as “Sketches of IUS” and forming part of the film’s broader creative universe.

At its core, the film explores the encounter between two characters from radically different worlds, whose brief interaction unfolds as both a realistic and symbolic experience. The narrative blends the naturalism of rural Asturias with a poetic and abstract dimension, allowing multiple interpretations to coexist: a memory resurfacing, an impossible meeting, or an emotional reconstruction shaped by absence and loss.

Shot on location in Asturias, including the Picos de Europa and municipalities such as Cabrales, Onís and Piloña, the film integrates its physical environment into the storytelling. Spaces such as traditional cheese caves and rural architecture are not only settings, but essential elements that reinforce the atmosphere and thematic depth of the film.

Through this layered approach, IUS of Time moves between realism and abstraction, connecting a personal story with broader reflections on time, identity and the traces left by the past.

The Australian premiere of IUS of Time adds a new milestone to the film’s international journey, reinforcing its place within contemporary independent and queer cinema.

Watch the official trailer:

The screening will take place on Friday, March 20, 2026, at 8:00 PM, as part of the Asturian Short Films program at Cines Embajadores Foncalada in Oviedo.

The festival will take place from March 20–29, 2026, featuring a program that brings together films and activities designed to connect filmmakers, industry professionals and audiences.

Oviedo Film Festival (FOCO)

The Oviedo Film Festival (FOCO) was founded in 2008 as a short film showcase initiated by students from the audiovisual programs of the Asturian educational centres IES Aramo and CIDISI.

Since then, it has evolved into a well-established festival within the Asturian film scene. In recent years the event has expanded its scope, evolving from a regional showcase into a national festival featuring both feature films and short films in competition, alongside various parallel activities dedicated to audiovisual creation.

The 16th edition of the festival will take place across several venues in the city of Oviedo, including Cines Embajadores Foncalada.

IUS of Time, a return to Asturias

The selection at the Oviedo Film Festival also represents a very special return to Asturias for IUS of Time, a short film set in the Asturian countryside that reflects on memory, the passage of time and the bonds between generations.

A story that explores the relationship between place and the shared experiences of different generations, where the landscape and traditional rural trades play a central role.

The film continues its journey through festivals in Spain and internationally, further consolidating its presence within contemporary independent cinema.

Screening Information

The screening is part of the festival’s program dedicated to Asturian short films.

The cast of IUS of Time

The cast of IUS of Time brings together performers with diverse backgrounds in film, theatre and television.

Manuel Pizarro, a theatre, film and television actor with more than thirty years of experience, plays Xuan, a character shaped by the weight of the past and the scars of social injustice. His career has developed primarily in theatre, where he has received seven national awards for Best Leading Actor at various festivals and competitions. His work also includes the film “Mortadelo y Filemón” (dir. Javier Fesser) and the series “Vientos de agua” by Juan José Campanella.

The character of Luca is played by the Asturian actor Pelayo Carrizo, trained at the Asturias School of Dramatic Arts (ESAD). Carrizo has previously collaborated with directors Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi in several short films, including Water Circles Under Cotton Clouds, Blow Down and Sunset in Paris.

The cast is completed by Andy Almar, an Asturian actor and screenwriter who has appeared in several audiovisual productions, including the series “Poquita Fe” (2023), distributed by Movistar Plus+, as well as theatre and television projects.

Also part of the cast is Laura Ubach, an actress with experience in film, television and theatre, known for her participation in the series “Alma” (Netflix) and in the production “Olympo” (2025), also distributed by Netflix.

Filming in the rural heart of Asturias

Filming for IUS of Time took place in several locations across the Principality of Asturias, including the Picos de Europa and the municipalities of Cabrales, Onís and Piloña.

One of the most distinctive locations used during production was the Cabrales cheese aging caves, specifically those of the Asiegu Organic Dairy in the municipality of Cabrales. Inside these caves, where humidity reaches approximately 95%, some of the most atmospheric scenes of the short film were shot.

The crew also filmed in emblematic locations of the Asturian rural landscape, including the bar-shop El Chigre of Biedes in Piloña, a mountain stable in Sevares, and a 17th-century rural house in Biedes preserving Napoleonic-era furniture.

These locations help shape the film’s visual universe, where the landscape and rural traditions form an essential part of the story told by IUS of Time.

You can find more information about the film on the official page for IUS of Time on our website.

Header image: analogue photograph taken during the filming by Elmer Guevara © Almost Red Productions.

The selection represents a very special homecoming for the short film, which returns to Asturias after a strong run on the national and international festival circuit. In late 2025, the film received the Audience Award in the Asturias Section of the 24th Avilés Acción Film Festival and was also part of the official program of the 63rd Gijón International Film Festival (FICX), within the “Asturies Curtiumetraxes” Section, further consolidating its presence among the key showcases of Asturian cinema.

You can explore the full film page for IUS of Time on our website.

Oriéntate Official Selection: cinema, memory, and territory

Oriéntate has established itself as a festival fully devoted to Asturian audiovisual creation, combining film screenings, professional meetings, and cultural activities that highlight locally rooted cinema, intergenerational dialogue, and the development of new audiences.

Within the Official Selection, IUS of Time emerges as an intimate story about the encounter between a young photographer and an aging cheesemaker burdened by long-standing prejudices, where artistic creation and artisanal labor become unexpected bridges between two generations and two ways of inhabiting the world.

Set in the rural landscapes of Asturias, the film resonates naturally with the spirit of the festival, exploring themes such as the passage of time, memory, care, and unspoken affections through a restrained perspective deeply rooted in the territory.

The screening of IUS of Time will take place on Saturday, January 31, 2026, at 6:00 PM, within the Official Selection I, at the Casa de Cultura de Llanes. Further information is available on the festival’s official website.

An ongoing connection with Oriéntate

The presence of Almost Red Productions at Oriéntate reinforces a relationship built over the years. In 2023, the production company participated with Water Circles Under Cotton Clouds which was awarded the Audience Award for Best Short Film in the Oriéntate Section, and later, in 2025, Sunset in Paris was also featured in the Official Selection of the festival.

The selection of IUS of Time in this fifth edition further consolidates this shared journey and underscores the festival’s commitment to a body of work that explores identity, time, and the margins from a sensitive and deeply personal perspective.

Official trailer – IUS of Time (short film)

Image credit: Analogue still from IUS of Time by Elmer Guevara © Almost Red Productions.