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: