Student Academy Awards 2025

Award Description:

The Student Academy Awards (SAA) recognizes and honors student filmmakers who demonstrate excellence in the creation of motion pictures. By awarding these outstanding achievements, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences strives to support and inspire emerging filmmakers and to foster growth and education in the art and science of motion pictures.

2025 Call for Entries 

FILM ELIGIBILITY

1. Only films that are undergraduate intermediate level or capstone films, or graduate school intermediate level or thesis films are eligible for entry. For associate degree and certificate programs, only final film projects are eligible. Students may submit these films directly to the competition.

a. Intermediate level means films completed in your second-to-final year (i.e., a junior-level class) for undergraduate students and second year or later for graduate school students.

2. A film must have been made as part of a student’s coursework or graduation requirement.

3. All films must be no longer than 40 minutes including opening and closing credits.

4. Student directors are only allowed to submit one film per competition year.

5. Films must have been completed and submitted for final credit/grading between
June 2, 2024 and May 18, 2025, and within one year of the student’s graduation date.

CATEGORIES

• Animation
• Documentary
• Narrative
• Alternative/Experimental

IMPORTANT

• Deadline 18 May 2025
• Rules and Submissions via FilmFreeway

2020 Coverage

Finalists for Animation and Experimental Films

Alternative/Experimental (Domestic and International Film Schools)

Curry Sicong Tian, "Simulacra," University of Southern California
Luca Signoretti, Tobias Buchmann, Alicja Pahl, "Out Of Ordinary," Züricher Hochschule der Künste - Switzerland
Ewurakua Dawson-Amoah, "To the Girl that Looks Like Me," New York University
Elisa Maria Nadal, "Prisoners of the Body," Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film München - Germany

Animation (Domestic Film Schools)

Mengyuan Guo, Naicheng Liu, Suhn Young Chung, "Tricked," Ringling College of Art and Design
Rodrigo Chapoy, "Bear With Me," Ringling College of Art and Design
Di Lu, "Super Generic," Ringling College of Art and Design
Pilar Garcia-Fernandezsesma, "Ciervo," Rhode Island School of Design
Kate Namowicz, Skyler Porras, "Mime Your Manners," Ringling College of Art and Design
Kristoffer Molinari, "Death and Delilah," Brigham Young University
Daniela Dwek, Chrisy Baek, Maya Mendonca, "Hamsa," School of Visual Arts

Animation (International Film Schools)

Otalia Caussé, Geoffroy Collin, Fabien Meyran, "o28," Supinfocom Rubika - France
Pascal Schelbli, "The Beauty," Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg - Germany
Han Yang & Basil Malek, "The Tree," Gobelins, l'école de l'image - France

o28

In Lisbon, a german married couple is about to get aboard the legendary n°28 tramway, but how should you react when the brakes let go and embark you on a vertiginous race... With a baby on board.

The Beauty 

The film deals with oceans being polluted by plastic. The film takes the audience on a poetic journey through a fascinating underwater world, where plastic and nature become one. For one breath, worries and feelings of guilt seem to dissolve between eerily beautiful coral reefs and the mysterious depths of the ocean.

Making of:

The Tree

In a world of drought, an old man spends his days collecting drops of water to quench the thirst of a dead tree.

2019 Coverage

• Daughter Wins the Student Academy Award

2018 Coverage

• 4 Animation Winners in the 2018 Student Academy Awards

2017 Coverage

• Animation Winners

2016 Coverage

• 2016 Animation Winners

2014 Coverage

• 2014 Winners

2013 Coverage

• 2013 Winners