These are the nominees for the King Kong Award 2025
AFFR – the world’s largest film festival on cities and architecture – celebrates its 25th anniversary in grand style! But AFFR 2025 is also looking ahead with fresh new programmes and initiatives: on Sunday evening before the closing film, we’ll reveal the winners of the jury-selected King Kong Award and the popular Audience Award, during the very first AFFR Awards Ceremony.
To celebrate AFFR’s 25th anniversary, and the 10 year anniversary of our professional network King Kong Business Club, AFFR is introducing the King Kong Award for the most promising feature film at AFFR. The award, which comes with a reward of €5,000 and an award designed by Studio Marco Vermeulen, celebrates a creative debut film of feature length with an innovative viewpoint on architecture or the city, whose subject matter has urgency and a particular relevance to our current world.
On the basis of these criteria the editorial team has made a shortlist of seven films from the AFFR 2025 programme, that will be in the running for the King Kong Award, from which the jury will select one final winner. This jury consists of Hugo Emmerzael, Ingel Vaikla, Josephine Michau and Nikolaus Hirsch – all experts in the area of film, who operate independent from the AFFR editorial team or the King Kong Business Club.
The festive announcement of the winner will take place as an award ceremony before the closing film, Blade Runner, on Sunday 12 October; this will also be the moment AFFR will announce the winner of our longstanding popular vote, the AFFR Audience Award.
Nominees King Kong Award 2025
The Town That Drove Away
Due to the Ilisu dam project in Turkey, the historic village of Hasankeyf will be submerged. A brand-new Hasankeyf is being rebuilt further from the Tigris. The large, modern houses initially seem like progress, but soon the villagers are struck by homesickness.
Sanatorium
Near Odessa lies the Kuyalnik Sanatorium, a dated health resort where it feels as if the seventies never ended – even as the war increasingly makes its presence felt. A dryly comic portrait of colourful eccentrics who persevere stoically despite everything.
Miralles
Miralles’ work amazed everyone. This documentary takes the viewer on a poetic journey through eleven of his projects and offers a glimpse into his character and the free spirit that came with it.
I Am Night at Noonday
A contemporary fable in which Don Quixote, with a colander on his head, and Sancho Panza as a food delivery rider, wreak havoc in the privatized streets of Marseille. A hybrid fiction-documentary with a playful look at gated communities and segregation.
Latina, Latina
A mesmerizing journey through memory and contested political history unfolds as a daughter uncovers her estranged father’s haunting past amid the architectural remnants of fascist Italy.
Vista Mare
A sharp and deeply human observation of the invisible labor behind Italy’s Adriatic tourism industry, offering a quiet, empathetic look at the people who prepare, maintain, and dismantle the architecture of mass leisure.
Shifting Baselines
Boca Chica, Texas – also known as Starbase, the launch base of Elon Musk’s space company SpaceX. While Musk dreams of a journey to Mars, the nearby nature reserve is plagued by pollution. Shifting Baselines tells a nuanced story, but one in which the shadows of nostalgia and colonialism are never far away.