IUS of Time, the Asturian LGBTQ+ short film directed by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi, has won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Short Film at the 5th Pillusion Film Festival in Pill, in the Tyrolean Alps (Austria). The prize, voted directly by the festival’s audience, was announced just two days after the film held its Austrian premiere there on 27 August 2026.

IUS of Time award details at Pillusion Film Festival

IUS of Time: an award from the audience, in a barn in the Alps

There is a quiet symmetry to this win. IUS of Time is a story about a disappearing rural world — an ageing cheesemaker, a small village, a way of life holding on. Pillusion is a festival built inside a barn turned into a cinema in Pill, a village twenty-five minutes from Innsbruck, created by filmmakers Leo and Marina Decristoforo to bring independent cinema to an area where many surrounding towns and villages have no cinema of their own. This year the festival’s theme was Parallels — and few films could sit more naturally under that word.

That the award came directly from the audience makes it especially meaningful: a deeply local, rural Asturian story, chosen by the people of an alpine village gathered around a screen. Alongside its programme, Pillusion keeps analogue craft alive with hands-on workshops in 16mm filmmaking and large-format film photography — a festival, in its own words, of films worth the trip. IUS of Time screened in Block 4 on the second evening, followed by a Q&A in which the directors took part remotely from Spain. (The festival and the screening were covered in full in our Pillusion selection announcement.)

IUS of Time: nine awards across five continents

The Pillusion prize is the film’s ninth international award and distinction. Earlier honours include Best LGBTQIA+ Film at the 3rd Power24 International Film Festival in Durban (South Africa), the Director’s Choice Award at the 45th Thomas Edison Film Festival (United States), the Audience Award at the 24th Avilés Acción Film Festival (Spain), third place in the LQCW × CathayPlay Audience Choice Award at the 24th Beijing Queer Film Festival (China), and awards for Best Cinematography at the 4th Silicon Valley Queer Film Festival (United States) and the Piedad Isla Award at the Rural and Mountain Film Festival of Cervera de Pisuerga (Spain), along with a Certificate of Merit for Cinematography at the 68th Rochester International Film Festival (United States) and an Honourable Mention at the 1st Goitacá International Film Festival (Brazil). The full list of awards and selections is available on the film’s festival page.

IUS of Time: 71 festivals across 29 countries

Since its 2025 premiere, IUS of Time has now travelled to 71 international film festivals across 29 countries and five continents, establishing itself as one of the most internationally circulated Asturian fiction short films of recent years. Its journey includes Oscar- and Goya-qualifying events such as the 53rd Huesca International Film Festival, and screenings at the 31st Chéries-Chéris of Paris, the 43rd Reeling of Chicago, the 27th OUTshine of Miami, the 16th KASHISH Pride Film Festival of Mumbai, the 24th Beijing Queer Film Festival and the 63rd FICX of Gijón/Xixón, among many others. This autumn the film also travels to two Goya-qualifying festivals in Spain — the 15th K-Lidoscopi in Cullera and Octubre Corto in Arnedo.

About IUS of Time

IUS of Time (original title IUS del tiempo) follows Luca, a young photography student who arrives in a small village in Asturias to develop an artistic project and reconnect with his roots. He stays at the home of Xuan, an ageing cheesemaker whose apparent brusqueness gradually reveals a past shaped by silence, prejudice and unspoken histories. Through his camera, Luca becomes fascinated by Xuan’s hands and craft, and the encounter unfolds into an intimate exploration of memory, desire and belonging — a tribute to those who lived their relationships in the shadows, and to the transformative power of intergenerational connection.

The film was shot entirely on location in rural Asturias, in northern Spain — in the Picos de Europa, the cheese caves of Cabrales, and villages such as Biedes, Asiegu and Onís, in councils including Piloña.

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 with dialogue in Spanish and Asturian.

Discover more about IUS of Time

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

IUS of Time, co-directed by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi, returns to one of the main settings where it was filmed. The film is part of the Asturian short film showcase that launches Piloña Alternativa, a new cultural association, on Sunday 23 August 2026 in a village in the council of Piloña (Asturias), as part of Festival Piloña Alternativa, which brings together music and cinema.

There is something different about this screening: IUS of Time was filmed largely in Piloña, so it is not just another selection on its journey, but a homecoming — to the land and the people who made it possible.

Piloña Alternativa: audiovisual, music and rural life

Piloña Alternativa, led by Hernán F. Joglar, was founded by people from the audiovisual and music sectors with a clear idea: to offer a different kind of cultural proposal in a council that is becoming a creative hub. The 23 August event is its calling card — a prelude to what they hope to build — combining five concerts with an Asturian short film showcase, in a rural, intimate setting close to the artist.

On the music side, the day brings together El Meister, Gala, Pablo Und Destruktion, Capitán Bazofia and Monolelo. On the audiovisual side, they are committed — as with the music — to alternative cinema with a voice of its own.

The association sees the project as something itinerant: they believe in small screenings, close to the creator, in different emblematic locations around Piloña. And they are already looking further ahead: among their goals is to create a proper film festival — independent from the music, competitive in nature and with both regional and national sections — which the council does not yet have and which they hope to launch in future editions.

An Asturian short film showcase, two films shot in Piloña

The showcase brings together four Asturian short films, two of them shot in the council of Piloña itself:

• IUS of Time — Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi (filmed in Piloña)
• Mi amor — Enol Villamor (filmed in Piloña)
• Jackie Kane — José Luis Velázquez
• Parnaso — Alex Corte and Adri Neo

That two of the four works were filmed in Piloña is no coincidence: the association wants to encourage filming in the municipality, which has already hosted productions such as the feature film Infiesto. Screening at home what was filmed at home is, for them, a way of closing the circle and reclaiming the territory as a setting for cinema.

Piloña, a setting of IUS of Time

The film’s return to Piloña has a compelling reason: much of IUS of Time was shot in the council, seeking to capture the rural atmosphere of mountain Asturias. The crew filmed at the El Chigre bar-shop in Biedes, one of those typical local spots in mountain villages, and in a traditional stable in Sevares, hard to reach, which lends the texture of the craft and of rural life.

The home of Xuan, the ageing cheesemaker at the heart of the story, came to life in a 17th-century rural manor house in Biedes, which still holds Napoleonic-era furniture and gives the character’s dwelling its sense of time standing still. And some of the film’s most iconic scenes were shot in the former Cándido San Miguel school, in San Román.

For all this, the production had the support of the Piloña Town Council, as well as the collaboration of the Asturias Paraíso Natural Film Commission and the Department of Culture of the Principality of Asturias. Screening the film again in the very council where those natural sets were built closes, for the team, an emotional circle.

Rural cinema that travels the world

IUS of Time tells the story of Luca, a young photographer, and Xuan, an ageing cheesemaker who has spent a lifetime hiding his homosexuality under the weight of a small rural community. It is a film deeply rooted in its territory, and for that very reason it has found a natural home at festivals that champion rural life and close-up perspectives — from the Rural and Mountain Film Festival of Cervera de Pisuerga, where it won Best Cinematography, to the Pillusion Film Festival in the Tyrolean Alps, held in a converted barn. The Piloña showcase now joins that line — with the particularity that here the film returns to its own origin.

Meanwhile, the film’s run through the Spanish circuit keeps growing, with an increasing presence at Goya-qualifying festivals: the 53rd Huesca International Film Festival (Oscar & Goya Qualifying), the 34th Madrid Film Festival PNR, the 15th K-Lidoscopi in Cullera and, this autumn, the 28th Octubre Corto in Arnedo.

IUS of Time: from five continents, back home

All of this within an international journey now spanning five continents and 29 countries, with selections at festivals including the 31st Chéries-Chéris of Paris, the 43rd Reeling of Chicago and the 16th KASHISH Pride Film Festival of Mumbai, and seven awards and distinctions along the way. The full list of festival selections and awards is available on the film’s page. After travelling the world, IUS of Time returns to where it began: a village in Piloña.

More information

• Official page of IUS of Time
• Complete list of festival selections and awards
• Piloña Alternativa on Instagram
• Watch the official trailer

Note: Analogue header photograph by Elmer Guevara, behind the scenes of IUS of Time. © Almost Red Productions

IUS of Time, co-directed by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi, has been selected for the Official Fiction Selection of the 15th K-Lidoscopi Short Film Festival, held in Cullera (Valencia, Spain). Produced by Almost Red Productions with the support of the Principality of Asturias and the Asturias Paraíso Natural Film Commission, the film now travels from the north of Spain to the Valencian coast to join one of the country’s Goya-qualifying festivals.

For the directors, it is also a homecoming. In 2018, at the festival’s 7th edition, Canuto and Xiaoxi won the Best Screenplay Award for their short Sunken Plum (Ciruela de agua dulce), which was also nominated for Best Fiction Short and Best Art Direction. Eight years later they return to the same stage in Cullera with a new film — a quiet full circle for two filmmakers whose work keeps travelling far from where it was shot.

IUS of Time at the 15th K-Lidoscopi

🎬 Festival: 15th K-Lidoscopi Short Film Festival · Cullera, Valencia, Spain
🏆 Section: Official Selection — Fiction (Argumental)
🥇 Goya-Qualifying Festival (national reference for short film since 2012)
📅 Screening: within the festival’s Official Selection · exact date to be announced
🎞 Film: IUS of Time (IUS del tiempo) · Spain · 2025 · 25 min · Drama, Rural, LGBTIQ+

Festival: festivalcurts.k-lidoscopi.com

K-Lidoscopi: a Goya-qualifying festival and a national reference for short film

Organised by the Asociación Cultural K-Lidoscopi in Cullera, on the Valencian coast, the festival has grown since 2012 into one of the most respected short film events in Spain, bringing together some of the strongest work on the national short film scene each year. As a Goya-qualifying festival, its official selection is judged by category-specific committees of audiovisual professionals, across fiction, documentary and animation.

IUS of Time competes in the fiction category, alongside works by established Spanish directors — a line-up that reflects the range and ambition of contemporary Spanish short filmmaking.

Rural roots and hidden lives: the story of IUS of Time

Shot entirely in rural Asturias, in northern Spain, IUS of Time follows Luca, a young photography student who arrives in an Asturian village to develop an artistic project and to explore his own roots. He stays with Xuan, an ageing cheesemaker who has spent a lifetime hiding his homosexuality under the weight of a small rural community. Through Luca’s camera and Xuan’s trade, two generations and two worlds meet in an intimate, unexpected encounter.

The film was shot in the Picos de Europa and the cheese caves of Cabrales, across municipalities such as Piloña, Cabrales and Onís, and in villages such as Biedes and Asiegu — a portrait of a disappearing rural world and of the lives quietly held within it.

From Asturias to Valencia: an international journey reaching the Spanish qualifying circuit

The K-Lidoscopi selection brings IUS of Time into the official selection of one of Spain’s Goya-qualifying festivals, adding to its presence at other qualifying events such as the 53rd Huesca International Film Festival (Oscar & Goya Qualifying) and the 34th Madrid Film Festival PNR (Goya Qualifying). This autumn the film also screens at the 28th Octubre Corto – Arnedo Film Festival.

IUS of Time has also taken part in different sections of leading Asturian festivals such as the 63rd FICX in Gijón/Xixón and the 24th Avilés Acción Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award — a strong presence on the regional and national circuit alongside its international run.

Since its 2025 premiere, IUS of Time has gathered selections across five continents and 29 countries, at festivals including the 31st Chéries-Chéris of Paris, the 43rd Reeling of Chicago, the 16th KASHISH Pride Film Festival of Mumbai and the 63rd FICX of Gijón/Xixón, and has received seven awards and distinctions along the way. The full list of festival selections and awards is available on the film’s page.

More information

Official page of IUS of Time
Complete list of festival selections and awards
K-Lidoscopi Short Film Festival
Watch the official trailer

There is a quiet symmetry to this one. IUS of Time is a story about a disappearing rural world — a cheesemaker, an ageing village, a way of life holding on. Pillusion is a festival built in a barn cinema in Pill, a small village in the Inn valley twenty-five minutes from Innsbruck, devoted to celebrating film far from the city. This year its theme is Parallels. Few screenings could sit more naturally under that word.

IUS of Time at the 5th Pillusion Film Festival

Pillusion Festival: A barn cinema in the Alps

Pillusion is not a festival like the others on the film’s journey. It takes its name from Pill, the Tyrolean village that hosts it, and it happens inside a barn turned into a cinema, with a garden tended by the organisers’ family and screenings that run into the alpine night. Alongside the films, the festival runs hands-on workshops in 16mm filmmaking — shooting and developing — and large-format film photography, keeping analogue craft alive in an age of screens.

Created by filmmakers Leo and Marina Decristoforo, Pillusion also grew from a distinctly rural concern: bringing independent cinema to an area where many surrounding towns and villages have no cinema of their own.

It is, in its own words, a festival of films worth the trip. IUS of Time joins Block 4 on the second evening, alongside the short films The Mop and The Rough Skin of the Angels, followed by a Q&A in which the directors will take part remotely from Spain.

IUS of Time and other rural stories, far from the city

IUS of Time was shot entirely in rural Asturias, in northern Spain — in the Picos de Europa, the cheese caves of Cabrales, and villages such as Biedes, Asiegu and Onís, in councils including Piloña. It follows Luca, a young photographer, and Xuan, an ageing cheesemaker who has spent a lifetime hiding his homosexuality under the weight of a small rural community.

That a film about one vanishing rural world should find a home in another — a barn in the Alps, a festival that gathers a village around a screen — is the kind of parallel the film has been quietly drawing all along.

An ongoing international journey

The Pillusion selection adds Austria to a run that now spans five continents and 29 countries. It arrives in a busy month for the film, which has also been selected at the 8th AmiCorti International Film Festival in Peveragno (Italy) and the 7th Kobani International Film Festival (Germany), among many others still to be announced in the coming weeks.

Since its 2025 premiere, IUS of Time has screened at festivals including the 53rd Huesca International Film Festival (Oscar & Goya Qualifying), the 31st Chéries-Chéris of Paris, the 43rd Reeling of Chicago, the 16th KASHISH Pride Film Festival of Mumbai and the 63rd FICX of Gijón/Xixón, and has collected seven awards and distinctions along the way. This autumn it heads to two Goya-qualifying festivals in Spain: Octubre Corto in Arnedo and K-Lidoscopi in Cullera.

More information

• Official page of IUS of Time
• Complete list of festival selections and awards
• Pillusion Film Festival
• Watch the official trailer

IUS of Time, co-directed by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi, travels to Berlin this week as part of THE URGE, a curated short film programme presented by the Positively Different Short Film Festival (PDSFF) of Athens. The screening takes place during LAUSE : UNTEN – Antidisciplinary Theater Festival, held at Die Lause in Berlin-Kreuzberg.

Rather than being selected through an open call, the invitation emerged after the LAUSE : UNTEN team discovered the film during its official selection at the 7th Positively Different Short Film Festival in Athens earlier this year and proposed bringing it to Berlin.

The screening also marks several firsts for the film: it is the first time IUS of Time has been presented within an interdisciplinary arts festival rather than a film festival, and the first time it has formed part of a benefit event, where all proceeds support the independent cultural space hosting the programme.

IUS of Time at LAUSE : UNTEN — Berlin 2026

THE URGE: Memory, Mourning and Resistance

Rather than grouping films by country, genre or style, THE URGE brings together five works connected by shared questions of collective memory, mourning, silence and resistance.

The programme includes:

• Fragments on Resistance — Levan Tskhovrebadze & Ani Kiladze (Georgia)
• Nuno — Nuno Taborda (Portugal)
• IUS of Time — Roberto F. Canuto & Xu Xiaoxi (Spain)
• Those Who Are Left — Jonathan Brunner & Laura Hornberger (Palestine/Germany)
• Nasty — Margarita Alexiadi (Greece)

Within this context, IUS of Time is read alongside films dealing with occupied territories, political violence and personal loss. Xuan — the ageing cheesemaker living under the weight of decades-old rumours in a depopulating Asturian village — becomes part of a wider reflection on what communities choose to remember, what they decide to forget, and who is expected to carry silence on behalf of others.

It is a dialogue the film had not entered before, and one that expands its meaning beyond its original cultural context.

A Festival That Exists to Defend the Space It Happens In

Running from 23 to 25 July 2026, LAUSE : UNTEN describes itself as an antidisciplinary theatre festival, moving between theatre, dance, performance, visual arts, readings, concerts and cinema while deliberately refusing fixed artistic categories.

The festival revolves around Die Lause, a self-managed cultural space in Berlin-Kreuzberg that hosts artists, creative businesses, political initiatives and community organisations.

More than a venue, Die Lause has become a symbol of resistance against displacement and the growing pressures affecting independent culture in Berlin. Through the #LauseBleibt campaign, its community continues to oppose eviction, gentrification and cuts to cultural funding.

The festival itself is therefore a benefit event: all proceeds contribute directly to the continued existence of the space. Supporting the festival also means supporting the community that inhabits it.

From Athens to Berlin: When a Film Continues Travelling

The Positively Different Short Film Festival, organised in Athens by the Greek NGO Inter Alia, is built around principles of intersectionality and social inclusion, presenting films by and about communities whose voices are often underrepresented because of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, disability, class or religion.

Over recent years, the festival has evolved into a trans-local platform, with collaborations and screenings extending to cities including Istanbul, Belgrade, Sofia, Zagreb, Dakar and Nicosia. Berlin now joins that network.

The journey of IUS of Time to Berlin illustrates how films sometimes continue travelling long after a festival has ended — not through new submissions, but because someone in the audience decides they deserve to be seen again.

Three Screenings in Germany

Berlin marks the film’s third screening in Germany, following its participation in the 30th OpenEyes Filmfest Marburg (2025) and the 42nd Schwule Filmwoche Freiburg (2026), where it competed in the Fabulous Shorts I programme.

Germany has become one of the countries where IUS of Time has found particularly diverse exhibition contexts, ranging from LGBTQ+ film festivals to independent cultural initiatives.

With more than 67 international festival selections across five continents and seven festival awards and distinctions — including the Director’s Choice Award at the 45th Thomas Edison Film Festival (USA) and Best Cinematography at the 4th Silicon Valley Queer Film Festival (USA) — the film continues to reach audiences well beyond the LGBTQ+ circuit where its international journey began.

Recent screenings include the 15th Sofia Pride Film Fest (Bulgaria) and the 10th Out & Loud – Pune International Queer Film Festival (India).

A Film Shaped by Memory, Landscape and Emotional Encounter

Set in the rural landscapes of Asturias, northern Spain, IUS of Time follows Luca, a young photographer searching for something he cannot yet name, and Xuan, an ageing cheesemaker carrying decades of silence and emotional restraint.

Filmed in the Picos de Europa, the cheese caves of Cabrales and villages such as Biedes or Asiegu, the landscape functions not simply as scenery but as an emotional and narrative presence.

Developed alongside the companion films Blow Down and Sunset in Paris, conceived as the Sketches of IUS, the project explores memory, belonging, masculinity and intergenerational connection through a cinematic language rooted in place.

Berlin is a case in point: a story from a handful of Asturian villages, screened in a Kreuzberg courtyard that is fighting to remain what it is, next to films from Georgia and Palestine. The landscape does not shrink the story. It gives it somewhere to stand.

More Information

Berlin becomes another stop in the growing international journey of IUS of Time, which has now been officially selected at 67 festivals across five continents.

• Official page of IUS of Time
• Complete list of festival selections and awards
• 2025 Festival Journey
• Positively Different Short Film Festival – Athens
• Die Lause – Berlin-Kreuzberg
• Watch the official trailer

Watch the Trailer

IUS of Time has been selected for DiversimaCine, the social cinema competition of the 11th DiversidArte – Festival of Inclusive Arts, screening June 18 in A Coruña, Spain. The film is part of the open-air “Audience Vote” session of the 9th DiversimaCine Fiction Competition, held at the Campo da Leña, where the public votes for the Audience Award for Best Short Film.

Directed by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi and produced by Almost Red Productions with the support of the Department of Culture, Linguistic Policy and Sport of the Principality of Asturias and the Asturias Paraíso Natural Film Commission, the film joins an exclusive selection of only seven social fiction shorts from around the world.

This is a return to DiversidArte for Almost Red Productions — we previously took part in the festival with our short film Sunken Plum (Chen Li). Coming back, this time with IUS of Time, to a festival built around inclusion and diversity feels especially meaningful.

IUS of Time Screening details

What Is DiversidArte — and Why This Selection Matters

DiversidArte is a Festival of Inclusive Arts held each June in A Coruña, Galicia, and organised by the non-profit association Poten100mos. It defines itself as a cultural celebration of diversity and inclusion, designed to raise awareness around respect, equality and the visibility of communities that are too often left at the margins. Across its programme, the festival brings together music, performance, street culture and cinema, with a strong commitment to accessibility — including sign language interpretation, subtitling, reduced-mobility support and vibrating backpacks for deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences.

Within that framework, DiversimaCine is the festival’s social cinema competition, now in its 9th edition. Its Fiction section gathers a selection of social fiction shorts from around the world, screened outdoors at the Campo da Leña — a historic public square in A Coruña, between the Old Town and A Pescaría. The session is built around audience participation: the public watches the films under the stars and votes, turning the screening into a shared, communal act rather than a passive one.

For IUS of Time, a film about connection across difference and the quiet ways people come to understand one another, being part of a festival built entirely around inclusion and the social value of cinema is a natural and meaningful fit.

A Rural Story That Travels: The Making of IUS of Time

IUS of Time (IUS del tiempo) is a 25-minute Spanish fiction short film set in the rural heart of Asturias, in northern Spain, with dialogue in Spanish and Asturian (amestáu). It tells the story of an unlikely bond between Luca, a young photography student, and Xuan, an ageing cheesemaker who has spent a lifetime in silence — quietly carrying a homosexuality he was never able to live openly, under the weight of a rural environment that left little room for difference. Their encounter, hesitant at first, becomes a connection that changes them both.

It is a film about loneliness, hidden identity and the gap between generations: what an older man had to bury in silence, a younger one can finally recognise and name. That is precisely why it resonates in a social cinema context like DiversimaCine — a festival built around inclusion, diversity and the visibility of lives too often pushed to the margins.

The film was shot entirely on location in Piloña council and the Picos de Europa, drawing its visual identity from the real landscapes of Asturias: the cheese caves of Cabrales, where the region’s traditional blue cheese matures in the mountain rock, and the green fields of Onís or Piloña. Rather than treating these places as backdrop, the directors built the story around them — the work of the cheesemaker, the rhythm of rural life, and the silence of the mountains are part of the film’s emotional language. It stars Manuel Pizarro and Pelayo Carrizo, with Andy Almar and Laura Ubach, from a screenplay by Roberto F. Canuto, Xu Xiaoxi and Enrique Pérez Romero.

The Most Internationally Selected Asturian Short Film of Recent Years

With more than 65 official selections and 7 awards across four continents, IUS of Time stands as one of the most internationally circulated and successful Asturian fiction short films of recent years. Its journey has taken it from festivals in Spain, the United States and China to India, Australia, Finland, Greece, Bulgaria and Brazil — a reach rarely achieved by a short film rooted so specifically in a single rural region.

What makes that trajectory unusual is not only the number of selections, but their geographic and cultural spread. A story told partly in Asturian, set among cheese caves and mountain villages, has found audiences in contexts that could hardly be more different from rural Asturias — from queer film festivals in Mumbai and Goiânia to inclusive arts festivals on the Atlantic coast of Galicia. That trajectory suggests something the team has come to believe deeply: the more local and honest a story is, the further it tends to travel.

Part of a Wider Body of Work

IUS of Time is the central film in a small creative universe developed by Almost Red Productions in Asturias, alongside two companion shorts conceived during its development: Blow Down (Sketches of IUS I) and Sunset in Paris (Sketches of IUS II). What began as preparatory exercises around the same themes — memory, emotional landscape and human connection — eventually grew into films with lives of their own. In 2026, Sunset in Paris was selected by the ICAA for Aula Corto, the official educational platform of Spain’s Ministry of Culture, entering the country’s official educational circuit.

It is not the first time Almost Red’s work reaches Galicia and A Coruña. The company previously took part in DiversidArte with Sunken Plum (Chen Li), an earlier short film, which makes this new selection feel less like a first visit and more like a continuation of a longer relationship with the festival and its city. Returning now with IUS of Time closes a kind of circle, bringing the company’s work back to a festival and a community that welcomed it before.

Follow the Journey of IUS of Time

From the mountains of Asturias to an open-air square in A Coruña, IUS of Time keeps finding new audiences and new ways for its story to be seen. Explore more about the film, its festival route and its companion works:

IUS of Time has been selected for the 12th edition of DIGO – Goiás International Sexual and Gender Diversity Film Festival, screening June 21 in Goiânia, Brazil, in competition for Best Film in the International Short Film category.

Directed by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi and produced by Almost Red Productions with the support of the Department of Culture, Linguistic Policy and Sport of the Principality of Asturias and the Asturias Paraíso Natural Film Commission, the film is one of only ten films selected for DIGO’s competitive International Short Film section from hundreds of submissions received from around the world.

This is the third Brazilian selection for IUS of Time, though not the first time Almost Red Productions takes part in DIGO — the company has screened earlier work at the festival before.

Screening details

What Is DIGO — and Why This Selection Matters

DIGO – Goiás International Sexual and Gender Diversity Film Festival is the leading LGBTI+ film festival in Brazil’s Centre-West region, and one of the most significant platforms for queer cinema in Latin America. Founded in 2016, it has grown into an essential space for resistance, visibility and dialogue — combining film screenings with panels, workshops and cultural activities that extend the conversation beyond the screen.

In its 12th edition, DIGO received hundreds of submissions from around the world. From that pool, only ten films were selected for the competitive international programme — and IUS of Time is one of them. The international selection this year includes strong representation from Spain, Argentina, Chile and Peru, reflecting the festival’s commitment to Latin American and Iberian queer cinema.

DIGO operates as an independent festival without the support of local incentive laws — a fact its director, Cristiano Sousa, names openly. That independence makes its continued existence a political act as much as a cultural one. Being selected here is not only a recognition of the film; it is an invitation to be part of something that keeps going precisely because it has to.

IUS of Time in Brazil

This selection marks the third time IUS of Time has been chosen by a Brazilian festival. The film previously screened at the 14th Rio LGBTQIA+ International Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro, and received an Honorable Mention at the 1st Goitacá International Film Festival in Campos dos Goytacazes. Each selection has brought the film to a different Brazilian audience and region — and DIGO, as the leading LGBTI+ festival in the country’s Centre-West, adds a new and distinct geography to that presence, now spanning Rio de Janeiro, Campos dos Goytacazes and Goiânia.

Almost Red Productions’ prior relationship with DIGO makes this selection feel less like a first encounter and more like a return — this time with a film that has already travelled through more than 60 international festivals across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

IUS of Time: An Ongoing Journey

Through its focus on memory, landscape and intergenerational connection, IUS of Time has become part of a wider conversation around contemporary rural queer cinema — stories that move queer experience out of the city and into the mountains, the fields, and the small communities where it has always also existed.

From its first presentation in Asturias at the XI Festival CortoGijón to its international premiere at the 27th OUTshine LGBTQ Film Festival and its Northern European premiere at Manse Pride by the 56th Tampere Film Festival, through to recent selections at the 10th FeCHA Athens, the 11th Geelong Pride Film Festival in Australia, its fourth Indian festival at Out & Loud Pune and its Bulgarian premiere at the 15th Sofia Pride Film Fest, the film’s complete trajectory is documented in our festival selections and awards list.

About the Film

IUS of Time (IUS del tiempo) is a 25-minute Spanish fiction short film, with dialogue in Spanish and Asturian (amestáu), set in the rural landscapes of Asturias, in northern Spain. Directed by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi, it tells the story of an unlikely encounter between a young photographer and an ageing cheesemaker — two solitary lives that cross in an intimate, improbable collision of worlds. Through themes of memory, masculinity, emotional inheritance and intergenerational connection, the film explores queer experience in a rural setting rarely portrayed on screen.

The film was shot on location in the Picos de Europa, including the cheese caves of Cabrales, the fields of Onís and other natural settings across Asturias. It stars Manuel Pizarro and Pelayo Carrizo, with Andy Almar and Laura Ubach, and was written by Roberto F. Canuto, Xu Xiaoxi and Enrique Pérez Romero. With more than 60 international selections and 7 awards across four continents, IUS of Time is one of the most internationally circulated Asturian fiction short films of recent years.

Its international reception suggests that stories rooted in highly specific places can still resonate across very different cultural contexts.

Part of the Almost Red Universe

IUS of Time is the central work in a small creative universe developed by Almost Red Productions in Asturias. During its development, the directors created two companion short films conceived as preparatory sketches: Blow Down (Sketches of IUS I) and Sunset in Paris (Sketches of IUS II). What began as exercises around the same themes — memory, emotional landscape and human connection — grew into films with lives of their own.

In 2026, Sunset in Paris was selected by the ICAA for Aula Corto, the official educational short film platform of Spain’s Ministry of Culture, becoming the first film of the Almost Red universe to enter the country’s official educational circuit. Together, these films reflect an ongoing interest in telling intimate, rooted stories from rural Asturias — and in letting them travel as far as they can, from classrooms in Spain to festival screens across Europe, the Americas, Asia and Oceania.

Discover More About IUS of Time

With its selection at DIGO, IUS of Time continues a festival journey that has connected audiences across four continents while bringing stories rooted in rural Asturias into international conversations about memory, identity and queer experience.