The Iris Prize Awards

Now Playing: The Iris Prize Awards

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The team marks the festival's 20th edition with a show built around this year's Iris Prize, and goes behind the scenes of how the world's biggest LGBTQ+ short film prize is actually decided.

Sara Peacock, chair of this year's international jury, takes the team inside the judging process — ten jurors spread from California to Cardiff, 35 films from 22 countries and around nine and a half hours of viewing to get through — and explains how a room full of strong disagreements still lands on a consensus. She talks about the film that ended up in five of the ten jurors' top threes, and why the jury went back to ask for special permission for a third honourable mention rather than let a film they all cared about disappear unmentioned.

Welsh artist DONT MAKE THIS WEIRD joins the team to talk about a career that arrived sideways: acting first, then songs that made more sense than scripts ever did. They explain the joke behind the name, the discomfort that tends to start a song, and how a chance meeting at the festival might turn into a music video.

And Luís Hindman talks to the team straight after winning the £40,000 Iris Prize for Magid / Zafar, his propulsive short about a British Pakistani takeaway, a secret relationship, and the moment one of the pair has to say he is marrying a woman. He reflects on a year on the festival circuit, on the Best Lead Performance award his actor took the day before, on what the prize does for getting shorts in front of people who never go near a festival programme, and on the co-writer who missed the whole thing because he was on a book tour.

Originally Broadcast On:

2026-10-22 20:00

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