Leeds International Film Festival (LIFF) has announced the winners of the Audience Award for Best Feature Fiction Film and Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature Film alongside the jury awards for Best Film in the Constellation Feature Film Competition and the Fanomenon Feature Film Competition.
LIFF 2025 Audience Award for Best Fiction Feature goes to Kaouther Ben Hania’s unforgettable The Voice of Hind Rajab.
Winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Venice Film Festival, the film transforms the last recorded words of a six-year-old girl in Gaza into a vital act of remembrance. Blending archival audio with re-enactments, the film captures both the unbearable suspense of the complex rescue attempt and the impossible choices faced by first responders, creating a devastating and unforgettable portrait of innocence in the face of unspeakable violence.
LIFF 2025 Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature goes to Dennis Harvey and Lars Lovén’s vibrant portrait of Ireland’s folk renaissance, Celtic Utopia.
Featuring the likes of The Mary Wallopers, The Deadlians, Young Spencer, Lankum and more, these artists grapple with Ireland’s complex past, confronting legacies of colonialism while imagining freer futures. With bold humour, honesty, and a loose energy, the film celebrates music’s power to challenge painful histories while shaping what comes next.
This year’s jury for the Constellation Feature Film Competition was made up of Manchester based writer and international film curator Omar Ahmed, film and culture writer Lillian Crawford and co-founder of Glasgow based distributor Conic, Graham Fulton. The jury award for Best Film in the Constellation Feature Film Competition was Alexandra Makarová’s taut Cold War drama Perla.
The jury was extremely impressed by the film’s immersion in period detail, noting the meticulous production design, cinematography, and sound. With remarkable performances from Rebeka Poláková and Carmen Diego, the film subtly and astutely connected its historical moment to contemporary political subjects, rendering it both a strong vision of the past and the present.
Jury special mention was given to Arnaud Dufeys and Charlotte Devillers’s We Believe You (On vous croit). The jury were gripped by this tightly made legal drama, featuring a biting and timely screenplay delivered with virtuosic skill by Myriem Akheddiou.
This year’s jury for the Fanomenon Feature Film Competition was made up of film critic Becky Darke, filmmaker Paolo Strippoli and filmmaker Paris Zarcilla. The jury award for Best Film in the Fanomenon Feature Film Competition is Yanis Koussim’s eerie and graphic supernatural horror Roqia.
The jury said: “Roqia is a searing portrait of religious possession that places the horror in a spiritual world we’re not used to seeing in the subgenre, but which dropped us expertly into the middle of a fully-formed universe where everything just is and dares us to keep up. We found Roqia deeply affecting – disturbing, even – and were still thinking about it long after the credits rolled. Deftly directed and beautifully performed, Roqia poses questions beyond the usual telling of these kinds of stories and feels like a breath of fresh air for possession horror, even in its darkest moments.”
Special mentions in the Fanomenon feature film competition were given to Moonika Siimets’s The Black Hole and Laura Casabé‘s The Virgin of the Quarry Lake.
The jury said: “The Black Hole is a rich sci-fi delight that balances its humour and whimsy with poignance and warmth. The film looks great and has a brilliant script, and it contains probably the best single image of the competition (the legs!) plus gorgeous creature design that has stayed with us. More people should see The Black Hole!”
The jury said of The Virgin of the Quarry Lake: “We loved the furious witchy vibes of this unflinching coming-of-age film that’s awash with curses, jealousy and hormones. The central performance is a tour de force but everyone’s on blistering form. We can see why The Virgin of the Quarry Lake has already picked up significant praise and we predict it will become a horror gem for many.”
The top 10 in the LIFF 2025 Audience Award for Best Feature Film is:
The Voice of Hind Rajab
Happy Birthday
Sentimental Value
Calle Málaga
It Was Just an Accident
Rental Family
Resurrection
Little Amelie
Pillion
Space Cadet
The top 10 in the LIFF 2025 Audience Award for Best Documentary is:
Celtic Utopia
One of Us
Move Ya Body: The Birth of House
Yalla Parkour
The Shepherd and the Bear
Bloody Flicks 