Trieste Science+Fiction Festival Announces 2026 Winners: Sanguine Takes Asteroide Award, The Squirrel Wins Méliès d'Argent, Audience Award Goes to 5 More Minutes
The 2026 edition of the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival in Italy wrapped a week of screenings, talks, and panels at the beginning of November with the announcement of its awards, reported by STARBURST Magazine on November 11.
The Asteroide Award, for emerging talents in contemporary science fiction, fantasy, and horror, went to the French-Belgian film Sanguine, also titled Species. Directed by Marion Le Corroler, it follows a trainee doctor whose stress causes her to sweat blood. The jury was made up of filmmaker Paulo Strippoli, author Emma Brasiavsky, and Morten Haargensen, director of the Ramaskirk Film Festival.
The Méliès d'Argent Award, given in collaboration with the Méliès International Festivals Federation, went to The Squirrel, set in a clinical future where nature has been replaced by a sterile environment and a lonely artificial pet designer finds a living squirrel. The film also received the festival's first accolade, the Event Horizon Award of the National Institute of Astrophysics, which said it imagined, with irony and visual finesse, a dystopia born not from a catastrophe but from a choice. The winning films will represent Trieste in the race for the Méliès d'or at Sitges in 2027.
The Audience Award went to Javier Ruiz Caldera's 5 More Minutes. The Méliès d'Argent for short film went to Alexander Peskador's Rolling Mother, the Critic's Choice Award went to the Australian film Mum, I Am Alien Pregnant, directed by Thunderlips, with a special mention for Xu Zao's Light Pillar. The Rai4 Award was shared by 5 More Minutes and William Brooke's The Alice Paradox, and the Cinelab Award went to Andrea Scroccaro's Edo2.
Source: Trieste Science+Fiction Festival
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：观众佩戴3D眼镜在影院观影（资料图）。NASA Goddard Space Flight Center，CC BY 2.0，经Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: an audience watching a film wearing 3D glasses (file photo). NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
