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