Local Orbit | Feature Length Competition
The 2025 Golem for best feature-length film is awarded to Tropicana, by Omer Tobi (writer/director)
an Honorable Mention is given to The Milky Way, from Maya Kenig (writer/director)
Local Orbit | Shorts Competition
The 2025 Golem for best short film is awarded to The Things We Do for Love and Foreign Passport by Ayal Sgerski.
The jury decided on a special Golem Award for Kasey Cartoon by Veronica Kedar
An Honorable Mention is given to There Are No Witches in the Valley by Ayala Sharot
Awards Ceremony
The Awards ceremony will take place on Saturday, January 3, 2026, 19:00, at the closing night of the festival, and will include a special screening of the Golem award winning films.
Local Orbit Program
The 2025 Utopia Festival – The Tel-Aviv International Festival for Science Fiction and Fantastic Genre Film – is pleased to announce the winners of the Local Orbit competition for Israeli best short and best feature-length films. Utopia 2025 is taking place right now at its home base, the Tel-Aviv Cinematheque, closing on Saturday, continuing on with repeat screenings through January and February, as well as on Utopia-on-Demand, its online platform.
Local Orbit – the Israeli section of the film program – included a multitude of films, among them several genre celebrations, 30 years for Planet Blue by Gur Bentvitch (in a preview festival event in collaboration with Radical House), 20 years for Frozen Days by Danny Lerner, heralding the 2010’s Israeli genre film explosion, and 10 years to Freakout by Boaz Armoni, JeruZalem by the Paz Brothers and Abulele by Jonathan Geva, as well as the Israeli premiere of Sight Extended, the Sight Extended scifi dystopia by Utopia grads (winner of the 2012 awards) Daniel Lazo and Eran May-Raz.
This alongside dozens of fabulous, out-of-this-world, fantastic films, in the Galactic Panorama, the festival international program.
Local Orbit | Competitive Section
The Utopia jury deliberative process requests members to have a wide perspective on genre film-making, as an experimental space, a lob for ideas, wildly imaginative in their story-telling and aesthetic, in their art and craft, in their social commentary on politics, humanity, both local, global and galactic. The jury is requested to follow three pillars, to recognize excellence in genre-filmmaking from the Utopian perspective: innovation, imagination and social commentary. The meaning of these terms, points of view, as is the balancing act between then and the general art and craft of filmmaking as a whole, is left to the jury and always leads, as it had this time, to intense, fascinating and at times, humorous, always friendly, discussion and debate.
Local Orbit | Feature-Length Competition
Jury Members
Léonard Altmann (France), Festivals Manager at the international French sales company Charades.
Isaac Ezban (Mexico) – Filmmaker, co-founder of Red Elephant Films and Autocinema Coyote, Spotlight guest at 2018 Utopia, when we presented his first 3 genre films. Ezban had since directed two more, and more to come!
Hilla Vidor (Israel), Actress of both film and stage, her wide-ranging career spans theater, television and film, in Israel and abroad.
Alex Vinnitski (USA/Israel), LA-based Film/TV development and production senior executive, with more than 15 years of experience and expertise. Vinnitski is a partner at next2miles, the production banner led by Anna Faris and Michael Barrett.
Films In Competition
The Altman Method by Nadav Aronowicz
Horse With No Name by Asaf Asulin
The Milky Way by Maya Kenig
My One and Only by David Tauber
Features-Length Competition | Jury Announcement
The jury grants an Honorable Mention to The Milky Way, from director/writter Maya Kenig, for its innovation and creativity in the use of genre cinematic space, confident directing, and for the outstanding performances by Hila Ruach and Hadas Yaron.
Image from The Milky Way by Maya Kenig
The jury decided to award The Golem to Tropicana, by Omer Tobi (director and writer). The award is granted for its fearless, boundary-pushing filmmaking that brings horror and passion to the periphery, and for its unforgettable portrayal of a woman’s journey from invisibility to the ownership of her life and desires, a journey that resonated deeply and stayed with us long after the film ended.
Local Orbit | Shorts Competition
Jury Members
Prof. Olga Gershenson (USA) – Professor of Jewish Studies and Near Eastern Studies and Film Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her latest book is New Israeli Horror (2024) about Israeli horror films and she is currently working on the volume The Handbook of Judaism and Film (forthcoming 2026).
Omer Harel (Israel) – Filmmaker, director of ReFeel, winner of the 2022 Golem, the Utopia award for best short film (it’s our tradition to have the previous winner to be on the jury, it’s been a while but we’re very happy he still accepted our invitation).
Saul Judd (Germany) – Independent film and media/video-art programmer and curator & part of the programming team for the LICHTER Frankfurt International Film Festival, where he is head of the LICHTER Art Awards and Programmer/Curator for the LICHTER International short film program.
Dr. Keren Omry (Chair) (Israel) – Lecturer and researcher at the University of Haifa, teaching, researching, and writing on science fiction, alternative histories and contemporary literature.
Addie Reiss (Israel/USA), formerly a cinematographer, now a global industry expert on 4D volumetric media, bringing to life the holograms of science fiction. He currently works at Digital Nation Entertainment in Los Angeles.
Films In Competition
Kasey Cartoon, Director: Veronica Kedar
Knockings, by Ori Dishi
Mirror Image, by Naama Lahav
No Witches in the Valley, by Ayala Sharot
The Things We do for Love and a Foreign Passport, by Ayal Sgerski
Window Watcher, by Gil Shalev
Shorts Competition | Jury Announcement
The jury decided on an honorable mention to Ayala Sharot’s There Are No Witches in the Valley. Drawing on elements of horror and fantasy, this animated documentary offers a deeply felt personal story of the filmmaker’s family, encompassing childhood trauma, reconciliation, and forgiveness.
The jury decided on a special award for Veronica Kedar‘s Kasey Cartoon, a fresh, funny, and innovative take on the relationship between a filmmaker and her creation. Skirting reality and fiction, live action and animation, the film explores questions of gender, race, agency, and liberation.
The Utopia 2025 International Jury is pleased to announce it has selected Ayal Sgerski’s The Things We Do for Love and Foreign Passport as this year’s Golem Award winner. The film is a masterfully crafted, genre-blending work. It portrays near-future Israel in a way that feels both recognizable and delightfully estranged. This dystopian piece strikes a balance between sudden bursts of black humor and profound restraint. At its core, the film delivers sharp social commentary, showcasing the gripping tension between an untenable life in one’s homeland and the debilitating demands of Kafkaesque bureaucracy elsewhere.
Image from Ayal Sgerski’s The Things We Do for Love and Foreign Passport