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 Asturian short film IUS of Time, directed by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi, has won Best Short Film at the 2nd Mieres Film Festival (FECIMI 2026), held on 17 and 18 October at Casa de Cultura Teodoro Cuesta in Mieres, Asturias, Spain.

The award was presented at the closing ceremony on Sunday 18 October. Pelayo Carrizo, one of the film’s lead actors, attended on behalf of the team and accepted the trophy from Cristian Farpón, president of HFP Audiovisuales, the association behind the festival.

The recognition follows the Asturias Audience Award at the 24th Avilés Acción Film Festival in 2025. For a production filmed entirely in Cabrales, Onís and Piloña, it is another opportunity to share its story with audiences in Asturias after screenings across five continents.

FECIMI 2026 award details

Pelayo Carrizo at the FECIMI closing ceremony

Pelayo Carrizo represented IUS of Time at the awards ceremony while its directors are in China preparing a new film project.

Carrizo plays Luca, a young photography student who arrives in an Asturian village to develop an artistic project and reconnect with his roots. There he meets Xuan, an ageing cheesemaker played by Manuel Pizarro, whose life has been shaped by rumours and isolation.

Their encounter unfolds into a story about queer memory, desire and relationships across generations. Photography and traditional cheesemaking accompany a relationship in which everyday gestures offer a way to approach experiences left unspoken for years.

A second award in Asturias for IUS of Time

The Mieres award is the film’s second in Asturias, following its audience recognition at Avilés Acción. Both belong to a journey rooted in the villages, working traditions and rural memory of the region.

Shot in Cabrales, Onís and Piloña, the film includes dialogue in Spanish and Asturian (amestao). Its locations include villages, traditional houses and spaces associated with rural work, with cheesemaking central to Xuan’s everyday life.

The story explores the experiences of LGBTQIA+ people who grew up in communities where expressing their sexuality could mean rejection. Through Xuan and Luca, it considers how prejudice and silence affect different generations.

Mieres continues the film’s screenings in Asturias, following the Gijón/Xixón International Film Festival, Cortogijón, the Centro Niemeyer LGBTI Film Festival, Avilés Acción and Cortoviedo.

Eleven awards and distinctions across a worldwide festival journey

With FECIMI, IUS of Time has received 11 awards and distinctions and more than 77 selections at festivals and film showcases across five continents.

Its honours include the Director’s Choice Award at the 45th Thomas Edison Film Festival (United States), Best LGBTQIA+ Film at the Power24 International Film Festival (South Africa), the Audience Award for Best Narrative Short Film at the Pillusion Film Festival (Austria) and Best International Short Film at the NEXT International Film Festival (India).

Fran Córdoba’s cinematography has also been recognised at the Silicon Valley Queer Film Festival (United States) and the Rural and Mountain Film Festival of Cervera de Pisuerga (Spain), where it received the Piedad Isla Award.

Other distinctions include third place in the LQCW × CathayPlay Audience Award at the Beijing Queer Film Festival (China), an Honourable Mention from the Technical Jury at the Goitacá International Film Festival (Brazil) and a Certificate of Merit for Cinematography at the Rochester International Film Festival (United States).

The festival journey continues this month with the film in the official competition of the 28th Octubre Corto in Arnedo, La Rioja, a qualifying festival for Spain’s Goya Awards.

Outside Spain, the film is part of the AKS International Minorities Festival 2026, Pakistan Edition, marking its Pakistani premiere. The programme runs from 1 October to 31 December; the date and venue of the film’s screening have yet to be announced. This selection joins recent appearances at the 1st Limouzi Film Festival in France and the 17th Cuenca del Salado International Short Film Festival in Argentina.

Another meeting with HFP Audiovisuales

The Mieres Film Festival (FECIMI) is organised by HFP Audiovisuales, a cultural and youth association chaired by Cristian Farpón. Its second edition brought short and feature films to the Casa de Cultura Teodoro Cuesta over two days.

For IUS of Time, the event was another meeting with the association after its participation in the 16th Cortoviedo Short Film Festival in 2026. The team thanks Cristian Farpón, HFP Audiovisuales, everyone at FECIMI and Mieres Town Council for the award and for welcoming Pelayo Carrizo.

An Almost Red production filmed in Asturias

IUS of Time is a 25-minute short film produced by Almost Red Productions and directed by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Enrique Pérez Romero.

Manuel Pizarro and Pelayo Carrizo lead a cast that also includes Andy Almar, Laura Ubach, Martina Bueno and Pablo Valdés. Fran Córdoba is the director of photography and Maikel Valdés the art director.

The film was shot entirely in Asturias with support from the Department of Culture, Language Policy and Sport of the Principality of Asturias and Asturias Paraíso Natural Film Commission.

Our Mieres selection announcement covers the film’s participation in this second edition. Visit the official film page and the complete festival selections and awards for more information.

Questions about the IUS of Time award in Mieres

Watch the official IUS of Time trailer

Watch the official trailer on YouTube

See IUS of Time in Mieres

The film will screen in the short-film competition session on Sunday 18 October at 5 pm, at Casa de Cultura Teodoro Cuesta in Mieres.

A festival rooted in Asturian filmmaking

FECIMI is organised by HFP Audiovisuales, the cultural and youth association led by its president, Cristian Farpón. Its story began in 2008, when a group of students from the audiovisual courses at IES Aramo and CIDISI decided to take their interest in cinema further. Since then, the association has developed training and screening initiatives, including the Oviedo festival that evolved from Cortoviedo into FOCO.

Now in its second edition in Mieres, the festival brings that work to another screen in Asturias. It aims to support the region’s film culture and industry, with awards for both Asturian and national short and feature films. For IUS of Time, this selection also renews a connection with HFP Audiovisuales following its appearance at the 16th Cortoviedo Short Film Festival (2026).

Manuel Pizarro and Pelayo Carrizo: Xuan meets Luca

In IUS of Time, Manuel Pizarro plays Xuan, a veteran cheesemaker living apart from others, marked by old rumours. Pelayo Carrizo plays Luca, a young photography student who arrives in an Asturian village to pursue an artistic project and explore his roots. Their developing relationship invites them to look again at what once seemed familiar: each other, the village and themselves.

The hands that make the cheese and Luca’s photographs accompany this growing connection. Through work, silences and small everyday gestures, the film explores loneliness, desire and memory. The rural landscape is part of the story: it is where the characters work, observe one another and discover the possibility of companionship.

Filmed in Cabrales, Onís and Piloña, the 25-minute short features dialogue in Spanish and Asturian (amestao). Andy Almar, Laura Ubach, Martina Bueno and Pablo Valdés complete the cast. Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi wrote the screenplay with Enrique Pérez Romero, with cinematography by Fran Córdoba and art direction by Maikel Valdés.

The Almost Red Producciones production received support from the Consejería de Cultura, Política Llingüística y Deporte del Principado de Asturias and Asturias Paraíso Natural Film Commission.

A festival journey that keeps returning to Asturias

Mieres joins an Asturian journey that includes the 11th Cortogijón Short Film Festival, the 10th LGTBI Film Festival at Centro Niemeyer, the 63rd Gijón/Xixón International Film Festival and the 24th Avilés Acción, all in 2025. At Avilés Acción, IUS of Time received the Audience Award in the Asturias section. The film has also taken part in the 1st La Benefílmica Film Showcase (2026), in Piloña, one of the municipalities where it was filmed.

The screening comes during a particularly busy October: the short is also participating in the Official Competition at the 28th Octubre Corto in Arnedo. Beyond Spain, selections at the 1st Limouzi Film Festival (2026), in France, and the 17th Cuenca del Salado International Short Film Festival (2026), in Argentina, have brought this Asturian story to very different audiences and settings.

Its festival and showcase journey now spans more than 77 selections across five continents, with 10 awards and distinctions. Recent honours include Best Short Film (International) at the 8th NEXT International Film Festival (2026), in India, the Audience Award at the 5th Pillusion Film Festival (2026), in Austria, and Best LGBTQIA+ Film at the 3rd Power24 International Film Festival (2026), in South Africa. The next stop in Mieres brings Xuan and Luca back to an Asturian cinema, where their voices and landscapes feel particularly close to home.

Questions about IUS of Time at the Mieres Film Festival

Further information and related news

Official IUS of Time film page
Meet the directors: Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi
2nd Mieres Film Festival: official website
The complete IUS of Time festival and awards journey
IUS of Time at the 28th Octubre Corto
Returning to Piloña with La Benefílmica

Watch the official trailer

Watch the official trailer of IUS of Time on YouTube.

The festival runs from 15 to 24 October 2026. The official programme schedules the film for Friday 23 October at 8:30 pm, at Teatro Cervantes in Arnedo and Cines Siete Infantes in Logroño. IUS of Time represents Asturian cinema among the 27 short films in the Official Competition and is the only title in the programme identified with Asturias. The selection brings Xuan and Luca’s story to two screens in La Rioja, within a competition spanning fiction, documentary and animation.

Octubre Corto: a place for Spanish short cinema

Organised by the Asociación Cultural de Vanguardias Arnedanas Aborigen and directed by Chechu León, Octubre Corto combines its competitions with cultural and educational activities. Its relationship with screenwriter Rafael Azcona, who visited Arnedo in 2006, became a defining part of its identity. The 2026 edition marks his centenary and honours actress Luisa Gavasa with the Ciudad de Arnedo award.

For IUS of Time, this context offers a meeting with audiences attentive to performance, writing and the possibilities of the short form. The film’s intimate scale leaves room for gestures, hesitation and the changing distance between two people: elements that gain particular resonance when experienced together in a cinema.

IUS of Time: A journey through Goya-qualifying festivals

Octubre Corto joins a significant group of Spanish festivals in the film’s festival journey: the 53rd Huesca International Film Festival, where it competed in the Ibero-American Short Film Competition in 2025; the 34th Festival de Cine de Madrid FCM-PNR, with an official short-film selection in 2025; and the 15th K-Lidoscopi in Cullera, with an Official Fiction selection in 2026. Our report on K-Lidoscopi also recalls the directors’ earlier screenwriting award there for Sunken Plum.

The film’s Spanish journey also includes other Goya-qualifying festivals, such as the 24th Avilés Acción, where the film received the Audience Award in the Asturias section, and the 63rd FICX — Gijón/Xixón International Film Festival, in Asturies Curtiumetraxes. Both events form part of a sustained presence on Asturian screens alongside the film’s journey across Spain.

An Asturian story finding audiences across Spain

In Asturias, its journey also includes the 11th Cortogijón and the 10th LGTBI Film Festival at Centro Niemeyer, as well as La Benefílmica in Piloña. Beyond the region, the film has found audiences at national competitions, queer film programmes and events rooted in local culture. Its selections include the 28th FanCineQueer in Extremadura, the 47th Semana de Cine de Lugo and the 18th Rodinia International Short Film Festival in Valladolid. It also received the Piedad Isla Award for Best Cinematography at the third Rural and Mountain Film Festival of Cervera de Pisuerga.

This range matters to a film in which rural identity and queer experience are inseparable. Returning to Spanish screens after encounters with international audiences allows its language, landscape and social memory to be read in different ways. The La Benefílmica screening in Piloña brought it back to one of its filming areas; Octubre Corto now introduces it to a new regional audience.

Hands, photographs and the possibility of recognition

In IUS of Time, Manuel Pizarro plays Xuan, a veteran cheesemaker carrying the weight of old rumours, and Pelayo Carrizo plays Luca, a young photographer who arrives in the village for an artistic project. What begins as an interest in hands and traditional craft gradually changes the way each man sees the other.

Manuel Pizarro brings more than thirty years of experience in theatre, film and television to Xuan. A co-founder of theatre company TEG, he has received seven national leading-actor awards at theatre festivals and competitions, as well as Best Film Actor at the fourth GAVA Awards. His credits include Mortadelo y Filemón, directed by Javier Fesser, and the television series Vientos de agua, directed by Juan José Campanella. Xuan brings toughness and tenderness together: a man whose present still carries the traces of a happiness he once had to relinquish.

Pelayo Carrizo, a graduate of Asturias’s Higher School of Dramatic Art, approaches Luca from a different generational perspective. He made his film debut in Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi’s Water Circles under Cotton Clouds and continued collaborating with the directors on Blow Down, Sunset in Paris and IUS of Time. His young photographer’s curiosity meets Xuan’s material world of countryside, animals and traditional craft. Their encounter changes his way of looking and sustains the film’s dialogue between memory, desire and generations.

The film connects the act of looking with the possibility of being recognised. Photography preserves a moment; cheesemaking requires patience and transformation. Around those everyday practices, the story considers loneliness, desire and the emotional legacy of prejudice without separating its characters from the place they inhabit.

Shot in Cabrales, Onís and Piloña, Asturias, the 25-minute film was completed in 2025. Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi wrote the screenplay with Enrique Pérez Romero. Fran Córdoba’s cinematography, Maikel Valdés’s art direction and the directors’ editing shape its visual world. Andy Almar, Laura Ubach, Martina Bueno and Pablo Valdés complete the cast.

Produced by Almost Red Producciones, the film received support from the Consejería de Cultura, Política Llingüística y Deporte del Principado de Asturias and Asturias Paraíso Natural Film Commission.

77 selections, 10 awards and 32 countries

As of October 2026, the production’s updated record stands at 77 selections, 10 awards and 32 countries across five continents. That sustained circulation places IUS of Time among the Asturian short films with the widest international reach in recent years, connecting specialised queer festivals with broader short-film and independent-cinema programmes.

Recent milestones include Best Short Film (International) at the eighth NEXT International Film Festival in India, the Audience Award at the fifth Pillusion Film Festival in Austria and Best LGBTQIA+ Film at the third Power24 International Film Festival in South Africa. The recent Cuenca del Salado selection in Argentina reflects the same continuing movement between cultures. Octubre Corto adds a new chapter within Spain’s short-film competition circuit.

Watch the official trailer

Watch the official trailer of IUS of Time on YouTube

The short screened on Thursday 8 October at 8 pm at Centro Cultural La Pieza, in the “Género de cine” programme. The official FICCS 2026 programme brings together six works exploring gender and diversity in this session. For a story about desire, silence and relationships across generations in an Asturian village, meeting audiences in Rauch extends a conversation that already spans five continents.

FICCS: seventeen editions of shared cinema in Rauch

The Festival Internacional de Cortos de la Cuenca del Salado began in 2010, but its roots reach back to March 2005, when a group of friends founded Cineclub El Gabinete. This edition’s catalogue recalls their first screenings in borrowed spaces, with rented equipment and chairs supplied by neighbours. That initial enthusiasm grew into workshops, encounters with filmmakers, outdoor screenings and visits to rural communities.

The festival was created to showcase local filmmaking and bring films from Argentina and abroad to Rauch. Its continuity over seventeen editions, including an online edition during the pandemic, reflects a belief in cinema as a place to meet. Its significance lies in sustaining a community of viewers while opening an international window from the interior of Buenos Aires province.

Organised by Asociación Civil Cineclub El Gabinete, FICCS 2026 is supported by the Culture Department of the Municipality of Rauch and the Instituto Cultural Bonaerense, with the endorsement of the Faculty of Arts at Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires (UNICEN). Its programme combines screenings, education and collaboration with local institutions. In this setting, a film rooted in rural Asturias finds a new place to share its questions about belonging, memory and affection.

The festival also provides a connection to wider short-film awards circuits. Its 2026 regulations identify FICCS as a qualifying festival for the Ibero-American category of Spain’s Fugaz Awards and the short-film category of Argentina’s Sur Awards. The organisers select the festival’s representatives for these awards; participation in the programme does not automatically qualify an individual film.

From Asturias to La Pieza: looking at what remains unspoken

In IUS of Time, Manuel Pizarro plays Xuan, a former teacher and cheesemaker whose life is shaped by memories and silences, while Pelayo Carrizo plays Luca, a young photographer who arrives in the village to develop an artistic project. Luca’s camera focuses on Xuan’s work, but his interest in the older man’s hands and craft opens a relationship that moves beyond their initial impressions of one another.

Photography and traditional cheesemaking suggest two ways of relating to time: observing and preserving an image, or accompanying a slow transformation. Through them, the film approaches ageing, desire and the traces that prejudice leaves in everyday life. The encounter between its protagonists explores which memories are passed on, which remain unspoken, and how another person’s gaze can reveal part of one’s own identity.

Shot entirely in Asturias, principally in Cabrales, Onís and Piloña, the film weaves landscape, domestic spaces and dialogue in Spanish and Asturian/amestáu into its characters’ experience. Rural life shapes their relationships, their work and their way of inhabiting the world. Those specific roots travel with the short into every new screening context.

Directed by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi, the 25-minute Spanish short was completed in 2025. Both directors wrote the screenplay with Enrique Pérez Romero, with cinematography by Fran Córdoba. Andy Almar, Laura Ubach, Martina Bueno and Pablo Valdés complete the cast. The Almost Red Producciones production received support from the Consejería de Cultura, Política Llingüística y Deporte del Principado de Asturias and Asturias Paraíso Natural Film Commission.

From Asterisco to FICCS: another encounter with Argentina

The return to Argentina follows a particularly meaningful earlier screening. On 23 October 2025, IUS of Time featured in “España, archivo y memoria queer” at MALBA, during the 12th Festival Internacional de Cine LGBTIQ+ Asterisco. Accompanied by a talk by Diego Trerotola and supported by the Centro Cultural de España en Buenos Aires, the session placed the film in a conversation about representations of the past and queer memory.

Its inclusion in FICCS’s “Género de cine” continues that dialogue in another city and cultural space. Buenos Aires and Rauch offer different settings for the same story: the possibility of recognising shared experiences in lives that may initially seem distant.

Fifteen festival and showcase appearances across Latin America

With FICCS, the festival journey of IUS of Time encompasses nine appearances across six South American countries. Alongside Asterisco and FICCS in Argentina are the 22nd OutfestPerú in Lima; the 14th Rio LGBTQIA+ International Film Festival, the first Festival Internacional Goitacá de Cinema and 12th DIGO in Goiás, Brazil; the 17th CineMovilh in Chile; the ninth Bajo Nuestra Piel in Bolivia; and SANFICI in Colombia. At Goitacá, the film also received an honourable mention from the technical jury, covered in our 2025 festival overview.

Beyond South America, the film has participated in the 29th MIX México and the 12th International Queer Film Festival in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, as well as X Diverso Festival Internacional de Cine GLBT de Panamá. Together, these bring its Latin American journey to 12 festivals.

The journey also includes three country-specific presentations of the sixth Miradas: Armarios Abiertos showcase, in El Salvador, Honduras and Panama. Counting each national presentation separately, this amounts to 15 participations in festivals and showcases across 10 Latin American countries. Part of AECID’s Armarios Abiertos programme in collaboration with the Centro Niemeyer’s LGTBI Film Festival, Miradas connects this Asturian story with cultural spaces devoted to diversity and human rights. These encounters introduce Xuan and Luca to audiences with different cultural perspectives.

An Asturian story travelling across five continents

With more than 70 selections in over 30 countries and 10 awards and distinctions, IUS of Time stands among the Asturian short films with the widest international reach in recent years. Its journey includes the Huesca International Film Festival, FICX in Gijón/Xixón, Chéries-Chéris in Paris, Reeling in Chicago and KASHISH in Mumbai, as well as screenings in Australia and South Africa.

Recent honours include Best Short Film (International) at the eighth NEXT International Film Festival in Kolkata, the Audience Award for Best Fiction Short Film at the fifth Pillusion Film Festival in Austria, and Best LGBTQIA+ Film at the third Power24 International Film Festival in South Africa. Rauch adds another stop to that journey, keeping a perspective on rural Asturias, its memories and the possibilities of connection across generations in circulation.

Watch the official trailer

IUS of Time (2025): official trailer of the film by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi

The cultural programme Pieces, broadcast by Asturias’ public television channel TPA, features IUS of Time (IUS del tiempo, 2025). The report appears in season 20, episode 35, dated 5 October 2026 on RTPA’s on-demand service, and includes Roberto F. Canuto’s reflections on the film he directed with Xu Xiaoxi.

Shot entirely in Asturias, in the municipalities of Cabrales, Piloña and Onís, the short brings together Luca, a young photographer played by Pelayo Carrizo, and Xuan, a cheesemaker played by Manuel Pizarro. The report explores the development of their relationship and the ways the past remains present in places and in the people who inhabit them.

Memory, landscape and identity

Canuto explains that the landscape is shaped by the character’s gaze and his search for his roots. Describing the relationship between rural Asturias and memory, he identifies one of the film’s central concerns as “how the past permeates the present and who we are today”.

Roberto F. Canuto on IUS of Time, Pieces (TPA), 5 October 2026, at 33:44 in the full programme. Translated from Spanish.

Identity is another central theme. Canuto describes “the identity of two characters who come from opposing worlds”. Luca comes from an urban environment where he can live his relationships more freely; Xuan grew up amid repression and isolation. Their encounter opens up a space for mutual recognition across differences in age and experience.

Roberto F. Canuto on IUS of Time, Pieces (TPA), 5 October 2026, at 35:47 in the full programme. Translated from Spanish.

The world of IUS: from working with actors to sound

The director also recalls how the project began to take shape around two years before filming. Blow Down (Blow Down: Colapso) and Sunset in Paris (Atardecer en París) offered a way to explore the same fictional world and work with the actors and characters before developing Luca in IUS of Time.

The conversation also addresses the gradual development of the bond between the protagonists and the importance of nature and sound. Sounds associated with the past and with inhabited spaces help suggest what lies beyond the visible, a recurring interest in Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi’s filmmaking.

Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi are the co-founders of Almost Red Productions, working between Asturias and China. The report offers an insight into the creative decisions behind IUS of Time through the words of one of its directors.

Watch the Pieces report

The introduction to the IUS of Time report begins at 30:28 in the full programme. The same episode covers other cultural projects and includes a segment on Gonzalo Suárez and Las cabezas cortadas.

Watch Pieces, season 20, episode 35, on RTPA’s on-demand service · 5 October 2026. Programme in Asturian and Spanish.

Watch the standalone report in Pieces’ original Facebook post.

Source of the report and quotations: Pieces, TPA / Radiotelevisión del Principado de Asturias (RTPA). Timestamps refer to the full programme on RTPA’s on-demand service. Quotations above have been translated from Spanish.

IUS of Time’s international festival journey

The report comes as the short continues its international festival journey. Recent recognition includes Best International Short Film at the 8th NEXT International Film Festival in Kolkata, announced on 30 September 2026 and marking the film’s tenth award. Explore the complete festival and awards record for IUS of Time.

IUS of Time — Official trailer

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, co-directed by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi, was part of the official programme of the 4th Bolinas Film Festival, in Bolinas, California. Produced by Almost Red Productions with the support of the Principality of Asturias and the Asturias Paraíso Natural Film Commission, the film screened at the Bolinas Gallery, within the Gallery Arthouse Popup Screenings that ran throughout the festival week.

The selection brings the film back to the San Francisco Bay Area, where it won Best Cinematography at the Silicon Valley Queer Film Festival this year, and adds another American stop to a route that began with its international premiere in Miami.

IUS of Time at the 4th Bolinas Film Festival

🎬 Festival: 4th Bolinas Film Festival · Bolinas, California, United States
🏛 Organised by Bolinas Film Festival, Inc.
📅 Dates: 17–20 September 2026
🎞 Section: Official programme · Gallery Arthouse Popup Screenings, Bolinas Gallery
🇺🇸 The film’s return to California after the Silicon Valley Queer Film Festival
🎥 Film: IUS of Time (IUS del tiempo) · Spain · 2025 · 25 min · Drama, Rural, LGBTIQ+

Festival: bolinasfilmfestival.com

Four days of cinema on the West Marin coast

Bolinas is a coastal village in West Marin, about an hour north of San Francisco. Its festival, run by the non-profit Bolinas Film Festival, Inc., reached its fourth edition this year and used the village itself as the venue: the Calvary Starlight Theater, the Bolinas Gallery, the Coast Cafe and Smiley’s Saloon, with birdwatching walks, a redwood forest immersion and a farm tour between screenings. The organisers describe it as a celebration of cinema, community and place.

The 2026 programme opened on Thursday 17 September with a gala and a short film series, continued on Friday with American Pachuco, brought four short blocks and two feature spotlights on Saturday, and closed on Sunday with Reggae Girlz and a free programme of films by local filmmakers.

IUS of Time: cheese caves, amestao and two men who were not looking for each other

IUS of Time was shot entirely in rural Asturias, in northern Spain: in the Picos de Europa, in the cheese caves of Cabrales and across the municipalities of Piloña, Cabrales and Onís, in villages such as Biedes and Asiegu. It is spoken in Spanish and in amestao, the mix of Spanish and Asturian still heard every day in those villages, and it was made with a small crew working inside the real places and the real trade it portrays.

Xuan spends his life in the caves where Cabrales cheese matures, an underground, slow and physical craft that the film follows without explaining it. Luca films that work, and in filming it he begins to see the man doing it. What happens between them is told mostly through silences, gestures and the work of two pairs of hands.

The film also keeps a specific idea at its centre: the lives a small rural community allows and the lives it quietly puts away. Xuan has spent decades hiding his homosexuality under the weight of a village where everyone knows everyone. Luca arrives from a generation for which that concealment is no longer obvious, and the distance between the two is the real subject of the film.

IUS of Time, more than a year on the road: 73 selections on five continents

Since its 2025 premiere, IUS of Time has gathered more than 70 official selections across five continents, screenings in 30 countries and 9 awards and distinctions, which makes it one of the most internationally circulated Asturian fiction short films of recent years.

Its international premiere was at the 27th OUTshine International Film Festival in Miami, and it later received the Director’s Choice Award at the 45th Thomas Edison Film Festival, an Oscar-qualifying festival in the United States, which brought the film into the festival’s 2026 touring programme across American cultural venues. Its two most recent awards arrived this year: Best LGBTQIA+ Film at the 3rd Power24 International Film Festival in Durban, South Africa, and the Audience Award for Best Narrative Short at the 5th Pillusion Film Festival in Tyrol, Austria. It has also been selected at the 53rd Huesca International Film Festival (Oscar and Goya qualifying), the 31st Chéries-Chéris of Paris, the 43rd Reeling of Chicago, the 16th KASHISH Pride Film Festival of Mumbai, the 24th Beijing Queer Film Festival, the 27th ReelOut of Canada and the 63rd FICX of Gijón/Xixón. The full list of festival selections and awards is available on the film’s page.

Technical details

• Original title: IUS del tiempo · International title: IUS of Time
• Spain · 2025 · 25 min 48 s · colour
• Languages: Spanish and Asturian (amestao)
• Subtitles available: English, French, Italian, Portuguese (European and Brazilian), Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Spanish
• Genre: drama · rural · LGBTIQ+
• Directed, written and edited by Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi · Screenplay with Enrique Pérez Romero
• Cinematography: Fran Córdoba
• Cast: Manuel Pizarro, Pelayo Carrizo, Andy Almar, Laura Ubach, Martina Bueno, Pablo Valdés
• Production: Almost Red Productions, with the support of the Principality of Asturias and the Asturias Paraíso Natural Film Commission
• Poster design: Ola Podgorska
• Programming and press enquiries: info@almostred.com

More information

Official page of IUS of Time
Complete list of festival selections and awards
Short Focus Film Festival
Roberto F. Canuto and Xu Xiaoxi
Watch the official trailer

Cover photo: analogue behind-the-scenes photograph by Elmer Guevara, with Manuel Pizarro as Xuan, and the festival laurels. © Almost Red Productions