R&A Shorts: TAFF Presents – Awarded Shorts

Curated in collaboration with Turku Animated Film Festival, the screening features a selection of short films awarded last year at the largest and most international animation festival in Finland, offering a comprehensive overview of the best contemporary animation.

Held every August, the festival culminates each year when an international jury of animation professionals reveals its decisions. Choosing the award winners is not an easy task and requires careful consideration. The audience also gets to share their opinion and vote for their favorite. This year TAFF celebrates its 10th anniversary with absurd, touching and boundary-pushing performances and films. Next year, the festival will be held from 26 to 30 August 2026.

Having toured the most prestigious animation festivals and even competing for an Oscar earlier this year, TAFF Audience Award winner Beautiful Men is a stop-motion animation about masculinity, insecurities and three brothers’ journey to Turkey for a hair transplant operation.

Winning a special mention in the student film category, Keep Out is a witty, sad but funny satire about desperate social media addicts who are overdosing on junk food and sex and are unable to find a way out from their labyrinths.

The winner of the best student film Red Meat really gets into the meat of its subject matter; living is suffering!

Selected to over 150 international festivals and awarded a special mention in the professional film category at TAFF, A Kind of Testament is the story of a young woman who comes across animations on the internet that have clearly been created from her private selfies. A stranger with the same name confesses to identity theft. 

Overflowing and flourishing in its visual style, The Flower Show was awarded as the Best National Film. The film, which also competed at Sundance and Annecy, reveals the constraints of femininity in a baroque garden. The poetic and fragmented film depicts women at the crossroads of different expectations and demands. 

Awarded as the Best Professional Film, Zima is a portrait of a small fisherman’s village where human to human, human to animal, animal to animal interdepend on a delicate balance of warm tender care and cold emotional cruelty. An eerie story of loneliness and community narrated with magical realism.

Annu Suvanto