Festival Internacional de Cine Diverso: “Revealed Memory”

Under the theme “La Memoria Revelada” (“Revealed Memory”), the Festival Internacional de Cine Diverso considers the stories, relationships and identities that cinema can preserve. Its official call on Festhome also announces talks, educational activities and filmmaker meetings. This interest in memory connects with a question at the heart of the film: what remains of a life when rumours have taken the place of a person’s own voice?

The directors’ connection with the festival began at its third edition, which selected “Blow Down: Colapso (Sketches of IUS I)” in 2025. Conceived as an exploration of the main character of “IUS of Time”, that earlier work allows the festival’s audience to discover another stage in the same creative process.

Xuan and Luca: desire, prejudice and a meeting between generations

Luca, a young photographer, arrives in an Asturian village to develop an artistic project and reconnect with his roots. He stays with Xuan, a former teacher and cheesemaker living in isolation under the weight of rumours about his past. Manuel Pizarro plays Xuan and Pelayo Carrizo plays Luca, two men whose different experiences do not prevent them from finding a possibility of companionship.

Photography and traditional cheesemaking shape their relationship with time: capturing an image or allowing a slow transformation to unfold. Through everyday gestures, the film explores ageing and the effects of social rejection, as well as enduring desire and the difficulty of trusting another person.

A production filmed in Cabrales, Onís and Piloña

Locations in Cabrales, Onís and Piloña place the story within the working life and rural communities of Asturias, in northern Spain. Cheese-ageing caves, houses and dialogue in Spanish and Asturian/amestáu are part of the characters’ daily experience. The film’s circulation abroad introduces audiences to a region through its traditional trades and the lives of its inhabitants.

Almost Red Productions made the film with support from the Consejería de Cultura, Política Llingüística y Deporte del Principado de Asturias, the Asturian regional department responsible for culture, language policy and sport, and Asturias Paraíso Natural Film Commission. The directors co-wrote the screenplay with Enrique Pérez Romero; cinematography is by Fran Córdoba and art direction by Maikel Valdés. Andy Almar, Laura Ubach, Martina Bueno and Pablo Valdés complete the cast.

“IUS of Time”: 78 festival and showcase selections, 11 awards and distinctions

The film’s festival journey spans more than 30 countries across five continents. Its continuing circulation gives an independent Asturian production a sustained international presence, bringing a queer story rooted in rural life to audiences abroad. Selections include Huesca, the Gijón/Xixón International Film Festival (FICX), Chéries-Chéris in Paris, Reeling in Chicago and KASHISH in Mumbai.

Its honours include the Director’s Choice Award at the Thomas Edison Film Festival in the United States; Best International Short Film at the NEXT International Film Festival in India; and the Audience Award for Best Narrative Short Film at Pillusion in Austria. The most recent is Best Short Film at FECIMI in Mieres, following the Audience Award in the Asturias section of Avilés Acción.

Barranquilla joins a recent stage of the journey that includes the Cuenca del Salado Festival in Argentina, the Limouzi Film Festival in France and the Pakistan edition of the AKS International Minorities Festival. In Spain, the film is also in the official selection of the 28th Octubre Corto in La Rioja, a Goya-qualifying festival.

Questions about “IUS of Time” in Barranquilla

Watch the official trailer for “IUS of Time”

Watch the official trailer on YouTube

The selection is part of the return of the AKS Outreach Program, with festival activities running from 1 October to 31 December 2026. According to the organisers’ announcement to selected filmmakers, most activities will take place in Lahore, Islamabad and Bahawalpur. The venue, date and time for IUS of Time will be announced at a later stage.

Why the AKS International Minorities Festival matters

AKS has built a distinctive space for film, art and dialogue around communities whose stories are often absent from mainstream screens. Its official website describes a particular commitment to transgender and sexual minorities, including Pakistan’s indigenous Khwaja Sira community. Its name means “reflection” or “mirror” in Urdu: an idea that places visibility and representation at the heart of the festival.

For IUS of Time, joining this programme gives its international journey a meaningful new context. The film approaches queer experience through intimacy, ageing and the lives preserved in everyday gestures. At AKS, those themes enter a festival shaped by local organisers, artists and audiences working to create room for minority perspectives.

In Pakistan, a Muslim-majority country with diverse cultural traditions, community-led initiatives such as AKS can offer valuable spaces for minority stories that have limited visibility on mainstream screens. Their importance lies in the work of local programmers, artists and communities: opening conversations, widening access to cinema and allowing audiences to encounter lives beyond familiar representations. For IUS of Time, this creates an opportunity for dialogue across different histories and experiences, through the shared human questions of memory, belonging and affection.

Outreach: taking cinema beyond its usual audiences

The significance of AKS extends beyond a single screening venue. In his study of the festival for NECSUS, the European Journal of Media Studies, researcher Siddharth Chadha documents how AKS developed screenings through educational institutions, community organisations and local networks during the pandemic. His account of the 2021 edition records 32 venues across ten cities, showing how outreach helped reach audiences beyond established cultural centres.

This history gives particular resonance to a film rooted in a small Asturian village. Stories of queer life also belong outside metropolitan settings. The opportunity for IUS of Time to become part of a community-led programme is an opportunity for its characters to meet viewers through a different kind of cultural exchange.

AKS has also developed connections beyond Pakistan. Its work has reached Copenhagen and Manchester, and its 2026 collaboration with SCENE in Manchester presented South Asian trans stories alongside discussion. This wider trajectory helps explain the festival’s place within an international conversation about whose lives cinema makes visible.

AKS Pakistan 2026: a community-led programme

For the 2026 Pakistan edition, the organisers have announced a curated selection of 55 films from around the world. Festival Producer Syed Ali Asghar describes the return of the on-the-ground Outreach Program as a way to bring international stories to viewers who may otherwise have limited opportunities to encounter them.

The edition is being organised with reduced cultural funding and a community-led budget. Its emphasis remains on access, exchange and the work of bringing films and audiences together. We are grateful to the AKS team for including IUS of Time in that effort.

Edition: AKS International Minorities Festival 2026 – Pakistan Edition.
Programme period: 1 October–31 December 2026.
Main cities announced by the organisers: Lahore, Islamabad and Bahawalpur.
IUS of Time screening: venue, date and time to be confirmed.

From rural Asturias: memory, desire and two generations

IUS of Time, originally titled IUS del tiempo, follows Luca, a photography student, and Xuan, an older cheesemaker. Their meeting opens a story about desire, belonging and a past marked by silence. Manuel Pizarro plays Xuan and Pelayo Carrizo plays Luca.

Directed by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi, the 2025 Spanish short is produced by Almost Red Producciones, with support from the Consejería de Cultura del Principado de Asturias and the Asturias Paraíso Natural Film Commission, and runs approximately 25 minutes, with dialogue in Spanish and Asturian. Fran Córdoba is its cinematographer; Canuto, Xu and Enrique Pérez Romero wrote the screenplay.

Photography and cheesemaking offer two ways of looking at time: one preserves an image, while the other depends on patient, repeated work. Their presence in the story invites attention to the knowledge carried by an older person’s hands and to the emotional histories that can remain unspoken within a community.

A continuing journey through Asian and international queer cinema

The Pakistan selection follows the film’s participation in the 16th KASHISH Pride Film Festival in Mumbai, where it had its Asian premiere in 2025, and the 13th Reel Desires – Chennai International Queer Film Festival. The film also received third place in the LQCW × CathayPlay Audience Choice Award at the 24th Beijing Queer Film Festival / Love Queer Cinema Week.

With 74 festival selections, screenings across more than 30 countries and five continents, and 10 awards, IUS of Time has established a substantial international presence for contemporary Asturian short cinema. Its distributor’s selection record documents a journey that carries a story rooted in rural Asturias to audiences around the world. Recent recognitions include Best Short Film (International) at the 8th NEXT International Film Festival in India, the Audience Award for Best Narrative Short Film at Austria’s 5th Pillusion Film Festival, and Best LGBTQIA+ Film at the 3rd Power24 International Film Festival in South Africa.

Alongside the recently announced selection for France’s Limouzi Film Festival, AKS adds another setting in which the film’s rural and queer perspectives can be discussed. Explore the complete festival and awards journey for further selections and recognitions.

Watch the official trailer

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

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, directed by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi, has won the jury award for Best Short Film (International) at the 8th NEXT International Film Festival in Kolkata, India. The recognition brings the film’s festival tally to ten awards and distinctions, with 74 international festival selections in more than 30 countries across five continents.

The winners were announced on 30 September 2026, ahead of the festival’s event day on 4 October 2026. The announcement also celebrates the film’s participation in the eighth edition of the festival, its fifth selection at an Indian festival since its premiere in 2025.

IUS of Time: award details in Kolkata

Best International Short Film at the 8th NEXT International Film Festival

In its award notification, the NEXT International Film Festival team praised the film’s “filmmaking, storytelling, and overall execution,” describing them as “superb,” and said that IUS of Time had truly impressed the festival team.

Based in Kolkata and directed by Indranil Banerjee, The NEXT International Film Festival welcomes national and international submissions across short films, features, documentaries, animation, music videos and other creative disciplines.

Selected winners at the 8th NEXT International Film Festival

The 2026 winners include films from Spain, France, India and Mexico. Among the awards announced by the festival are:

• Best Short Film (International): IUS of Time — Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi, Spain.
• Best Feature Film: Lulaboy — Michael Thomas, France.
• Best Short Film (National): Ragpicker’s List — Chandraveer Singh, India.
• Best Documentary: Rosa Rosa — Alenandra Gracis, Mexico.

Five festival selections in India

The selection at the 8th NEXT International Film Festival builds on an Indian journey that began with the film’s Asian premiere at the 16th KASHISH Pride Film Festival in Mumbai in 2025. That journey continued with the 13th Reel Desires – Chennai International Queer Film Festival and the 4th Utsav International Film Festival in Mumbai, both in 2025, followed by the 10th Out & Loud – Pune International Queer Film Festival in 2026.

Together, these five selections connect the film with festivals based in Mumbai, Chennai, Pune and Kolkata. They form part of a wider journey through independent and LGBTQ+ film programmes around the world, taking a story rooted in rural Asturias into different cultural contexts.

IUS of Time: 74 international selections and ten awards

This tenth recognition follows the Audience Award for Best Narrative Short Film at the 5th Pillusion Film Festival in Austria and Best LGBTQIA+ Film at the 3rd Power24 International Film Festival in South Africa.

Earlier honours include the Director’s Choice Award at the 45th Thomas Edison Film Festival, the Audience Award in the Asturias section at the 24th Avilés Acción Film Festival, and cinematography awards at the 4th Silicon Valley Queer Film Festival and the 3rd Rural and Mountain Film Festival of Cervera de Pisuerga. With 74 international festival selections in more than 30 countries across five continents, IUS of Time has established itself as the Asturian short film with the widest international festival reach in recent years. Its complete festival selections and awards trace this continuing journey.

About IUS of Time

IUS of Time (original title IUS del tiempo) follows Luca, a young photography student who arrives in a small Asturian village to develop an artistic project and reconnect with his roots. He stays with Xuan, an ageing cheesemaker whose life has been shaped by silence and prejudice. Their encounter becomes an intimate exploration of memory, desire and belonging, and of the connections that can grow between generations.

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, the film was shot entirely on location in Asturias, in northern Spain.

We warmly thank the festival jury and team for this recognition and congratulate the entire cast and crew of IUS of Time.

Discover more about IUS of Time

• Official film page
• Complete festival selections and awards
• The NEXT International Film Festival on FilmFreeway
• Festival announcements on Facebook

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 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.