IUS of Time, originally titled IUS del tiempo and presented in French as IUS du temps, has been officially selected for the Limouzi Film Festival. Held on 10 and 11 October at the Château de Brie in Champagnac-la-Rivière, the festival explores contemporary rural life through independent cinema.

The selection continues the film’s French journey after Chéries-Chéris in Paris and Écrans Mixtes in Lyon. This time, a story rooted in the villages and working landscapes of Asturias will meet audiences in the countryside of Limousin.

IUS of Time at Limouzi Film Festival: screening details

Date: Sunday, 11 October 2026
Session: Over the Rainbow, beginning at 14:25 (local time)
Venue: Château de Brie, Champagnac-la-Rivière, France
Screening language: Original version with French subtitles
Festival dates: 10–11 October 2026

The time above is the start of the session, rather than an individual start time for the film. Programme details and admission information are available from the official Over the Rainbow session page.

A different perspective on rural life

Limouzi brings together fiction, documentary and animation in a programme of 30 films across 12 thematic sessions. Its approach treats the countryside as a place of lived experience, imagination and social change. The castle setting brings those conversations into a rural landscape of its own.

Led by festival director Frédérique Cavalier, Limouzi grows out of the work of Tout Va Bien Production, an association founded in 2000 to support independent cinema through production, distribution and exhibition. Its early initiative Allons z’à la campagne took short films to villages with fewer than 200 inhabitants in Nouvelle-Aquitaine. As the festival’s own account of its origins explains, Limouzi builds on a belief that the countryside is a place of imagination and creation, with stories that deserve to be told on their own terms.

Filmmaker Kate Beecroft, director of The New West, is the festival’s patron. Alongside screenings, the programme includes conversations about who tells the stories of the countryside, documentary filmmaking and rural life after dark. The festival presents a Jury Prize, a Jury’s Favourite Prize and an Audience Award, inviting spectators to vote after screenings.

For IUS of Time, this creates a close connection between the subject of the film and the context in which it is shown. The relationship between Luca and Xuan develops through everyday encounters, the rhythms of work and the gradual discovery of experiences that have long remained unspoken.

The festival’s reading of IUS of Time

The festival highlights the encounter between two solitary people, the wounds left by the past and the pressure of other people’s judgement. It also emphasises the trust and comfort that Luca and Xuan find in each other, and the possibility of a new beginning.

That response echoes the film’s interest in emotional memory and in the lives of people whose relationships were kept in the shadows. The landscape holds their story, but it is the changing distance between the two characters that gives it its emotional centre.

From Asturias: people, places and the memory of a craft

Manuel Pizarro plays Xuan, an ageing cheesemaker, opposite Pelayo Carrizo as Luca, a young photography student who arrives in an Asturian village to pursue an artistic project and reconnect with his roots. Their meeting brings together different generations and ways of seeing, through a story about desire, belonging and the difficulty of speaking about the past.

The film was shot in Asturias, including locations in Cabrales, Onís and Piloña. The cheese-maturing caves of the Asiegu Organic Dairy in Cabrales connect Xuan’s work to a real place and a living tradition. In Piloña, filming included the bar-shop El Chigre in Biedes, a traditional stable in Sevares and a seventeenth-century rural house in Biedes used as Xuan’s home. The former Cándido San Miguel school in San Román also forms part of the film’s geography.

These places give the characters a material world: rooms, tools, stone and spaces shaped by use. They help place the film’s exploration of queer memory within a recognisable rural community. More about these locations appears in our account of the film’s Asturian cast and filming locations.

Fran Córdoba’s cinematography accompanies this encounter between people and place. The screenplay is by Roberto F. Canuto, Xu Xiaoxi and Enrique Pérez Romero, with a cast also including Andy Almar, Laura Ubach, Martina Bueno and Pablo Valdés.

A continuing dialogue with French and rural audiences

The film’s French journey includes the 31st Chéries-Chéris – Festival du film LGBTQIA & +++ de Paris (2025), where it had its French premiere, and the 16th Écrans Mixtes – Queer Film Festival of Lyon (2026), where it was selected for the European short film competition. Limouzi adds a rural setting to these encounters with French audiences, bringing the film from Paris and Lyon to the countryside of Limousin.

These screenings allow the same work to be encountered through different perspectives: queer experience, intergenerational relationships, rural identity and the craft of filmmaking. The complete festival selections and awards list records the film’s wider international journey.

74 festival selections, more than 30 countries and 10 awards

Since its premiere in 2025, IUS of Time has accumulated 74 international festival selections in more than 30 countries across five continents, alongside ten awards and distinctions. Its three most recent honours are the jury award for Best Short Film (International) at the 8th NEXT International Film Festival in Kolkata, India; the Audience Award for Best Narrative Short Film at the 5th Pillusion Film Festival in Pill, Austria; and Best LGBTQIA+ Film at the 3rd Power24 International Film Festival in Durban, South Africa.

These recognitions bring together the responses of juries and audiences in very different cultural settings. Alongside the Piedad Isla Award for Best Cinematography at the 3rd Rural and Mountain Film Festival of Cervera de Pisuerga, the audience prize at Pillusion also underlines the film’s connection with rural cinema events. Limouzi continues that dialogue, taking a story rooted in Asturias to another community gathered around independent film.

About the film

IUS of Time is a Spanish fiction short produced by Almost Red Productions in 2025. Directed by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi, it runs for 25 minutes, with dialogue in Spanish and Asturian.

Explore the official film page, watch the official trailer, or consult the Limouzi Film Festival programme for the full weekend schedule.

Watch the official trailer

IUS of Time (2025) | Official Trailer – Directed by Roberto F. Canuto & Xu Xiaoxi

Cover photo: analogue behind-the-scenes photograph by Elmer Guevara, with Pelayo Carrizo as Luca photographing a cow in an Asturian stable, and the Limouzi Film Festival laurels. © Almost Red Productions.

IUS of Time, a short film directed by Roberto F. Canuto & Xu Xiaoxi, has been selected for competition at the 16th edition of Écrans Mixtes – Queer Film Festival of Lyon, one of the most important LGBTQI+ film festivals in France and Europe. The event will take place from March 4 to 12, 2026, in Lyon and its metropolitan area, featuring an extensive international program of feature films and short films spanning fiction, documentary, and experimental cinema.

Within the short film competition, IUS of Time takes part in the European program, which brings together a total of ten works from across the continent. In this section, the film is the only Spanish title selected, sharing the lineup with works from the United Kingdom, Belgium, Portugal, Germany, Greece, Switzerland, and Italy.

The Écrans Mixtes 2026 short film selection is further expanded by an international section featuring six works from Iran, Brazil, Lebanon, and Cambodia, alongside a French program comprising five titles. Together, they form a diverse selection reflecting the aesthetic, political, and cultural plurality of contemporary queer cinema.

A Key Festival for Queer Cinema in France and Europe

Founded in 2011, Écrans Mixtes has, over sixteen editions, established itself as one of the most relevant queer film festivals in France and across Europe. Based in Lyon and its metropolitan area, the festival is known for an ambitious program that combines contemporary cinema, retrospectives, talks, and parallel activities, placing questions of gender, sexuality, identity, and representation at the centre of cultural debate.

Beyond its cinematic dimension, Écrans Mixtes is defined by a critical and political approach, with a particular focus on feminist, trans, and dissident film practices, as well as by its commitment to creating spaces for dialogue between filmmakers, audiences, and contemporary thought. In this context, the participation of IUS of Time in competition represents a particularly significant recognition within the European circuit of specialised festivals.

Official Short Film Competition and Awards

The participation of IUS of Time entails its inclusion in one of the festival’s most significant sections, evaluated by an international professional jury. Within this competition, the festival awards the Écrans Mixtes Prize for Best Short Film, as well as an Audience Award, reinforcing both artistic recognition and a direct connection with audiences.

The presence of IUS of Time within this competitive context highlights the festival’s attention to auteur-driven works that explore identities, affects, and memories through non-normative approaches, and positions the film within a selection that brings it into dialogue with some of the most active voices in contemporary European and international queer cinema.

Screening of IUS of Time at Écrans Mixtes 2026

The screening of IUS of Time will take place on Saturday, March 7, 2026, within the European Short Film Program – Program européen 2, included in the festival’s official competition.

This session brings together a selection of European works that explore queer experience from diverse cultural, generational, and aesthetic perspectives, fostering a dialogue between territories and contemporary sensibilities. Here, the film stands as the only Spanish production in the short film programs, reinforcing its distinct position within the selection.

The festival unfolds its program across multiple cultural venues throughout Lyon and its metropolitan area, promoting a decentralised exhibition model that broadens the encounter between the films, audiences, and the city’s cultural fabric.

A European Short Film in Dialogue with the Queer Present

Within the context of Écrans Mixtes—a festival that has historically fostered a space for reflection between cinema, body politics, and sexual dissidence—IUS of Time aligns itself with a strand of European queer cinema that privileges observation, duration, and lived experience over normative and accelerated narratives.

The film shapes its perspective around the encounter between two men from different generations, exploring how desire, care, and memory are passed on—or silenced—within contexts shaped by tradition and the passage of time. This intergenerational dimension, still uncommon in contemporary queer cinema, invites identity to be understood not as something fixed, but as a process constructed in relation to the other.

Shot entirely in the rural landscape of Asturias, IUS of Time also reflects on the countryside as a possible space for queer experience, moving away from dominant urban representations. In this sense, the landscape, traditional trades, and the rhythms of manual labour do not function as a backdrop, but as active elements that shape forms of relationship, intimacy, and resistance.

The film’s inclusion in competition within the European program at Écrans Mixtes highlights the festival’s interest in works that expand representations of queer experience through situated, sensitive perspectives that are deeply rooted in their territory.

A Sustained International Journey Across Diverse Contexts

Since its premiere, IUS of Time has developed an international trajectory that has positioned it within a circuit of generalist festivals as well as festivals specialising in queer and independent cinema, combining competitive sections with exhibition contexts that foster a sustained relationship between films and audiences. This circulation has enabled the short film to maintain a continued presence across diverse cultural, institutional, and community settings, organically expanding its international reach.

Beyond its participation in European competitions, the film has been screened in 2026 at festivals such as the 4th Silicon Valley Queer Film Festival (United States), the 14th Pink Life QueerFest (Ankara, Turkey), the 27th ReelOut Queer Film Festival (Canada), or the 45th Thomas Edison Film Festival (United States), a touring festival that awarded IUS of Time the Director’s Choice Award, recognising its artistic singularity and narrative strength.

This journey reflects the short film’s ability to engage with very diverse audiences and to place an intimate story—written by Roberto F. Canuto, Xu Xiaoxi, and Enrique Pérez Romero, and deeply rooted in the rural world—within contemporary conversations around identity, memory, and queer representation.

The international trajectory of IUS of Time thus continues in line with a filmography that has previously explored other cultural contexts and forms of dissidence, such as Sunken Plum, the most awarded short film to date by its directors, consolidating a coherent presence within contemporary independent queer cinema.

For more information about the short film, its full synopsis, and the complete list of selections and awards, please visit the official page for IUS of Time on the Almost Red Productions website.

Official Trailer of IUS of Time

Below, you can watch the official trailer of IUS of Time, a short film produced by Almost Red Productions, which accompanies its international festival journey and offers a first glimpse into its visual and emotional universe.

Through a restrained mise-en-scène and a close attention to time, gestures, and spaces, the trailer anticipates the film’s intimate gaze on memory, desire, and queer experience in the rural world—elements that have shaped its reception at international festivals.

Header image: photograph taken during the filming of IUS of Time in Asturias, used for illustrative purposes.