The University of Southern California, the University of the West of England Bristol, Film Academy Baden-Württemberg in Germany and Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School in Poland have won the gold medals at the 2025 Student Academy Awards, the Academy announced at a ceremony in New York City on Monday night.
Two of the winning schools are veterans of this annual competition: USC, which won in the alternative/experimental category for Xindi Zhang’s “The Song of Drifters,” trails only NYU in total Student Oscar wins in the awards’ 52 years, while Film Academy Baden-Württemberg (which won in the animation category for Tobias Eckerlin’s “A Sparrow’s Song”) is also a past winner, though this is its first award since the Academy allowed U.S. and international schools to go head-to-head in the same categories four years ago.
The other two winners, the University of the West of England Bristol (Tatiana McCabe’s “Tides of Life,” a winner in documentary) and the Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School (Jan Saczek’s “Dad’s Not Home” in narrative), received their first Student Academy Awards.
Other schools that won their first Student Oscars on Monday included the University of Copenhagen, Gobelins, the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava and the London College of Communication. Winning schools that had submitted victorious films in the past were NYU, Columbia, the Rhode Island School of Design and Tel Aviv University.
New York City hosted the ceremony for the first time after 48 shows in Los Angeles, one in London and two that took place virtually during the pandemic. The show was held at the Ziegfeld Ballroom during the New York Film Festival, and gave prizes to the films that were chosen from 3,127 entries from 988 colleges and universities.
All 12 winning films were announced in advance, but their medal placements — gold, silver or bronze, which carry cash prizes of $5,000, $3,000 and $2,000, respectively — were not revealed until the ceremony.
All the winners are now eligible to compete in the short-film categories at the 98th Academy Awards, where they’ll have a chance to add to the 69 Oscar nominations and 15 awards received by student winners since 1973.
While past Student Oscar winners include Spike Lee, Robert Zemeckis, Pete Docter, John Lasseter and “South Park” creator Trey Parker, the last one to be nominated by the big show was Lachlan Pendragon’s animated film “An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It” in 2022. Others have gotten close in recent years: Last year, for instance, four Student Oscar winners — “Origami” in animation, “Keeper” in documentary and “The Compatriot” and “Crust” in narrative — made the 15-film Oscar shortlists, but were not nominated.
Here’s the list of this year’s winners.
ALTERNATIVE/EXPERIMENTAL
GOLD: “The Song of Drifters,” Xindi Zhang, University of Southern California
SILVER: “Without Perfection,” Vega Moltke-Leth, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
BRONZE: “flower_gan,” Mati Granica, London College of Communication, United Kingdom
ANIMATION
GOLD: “A Sparrow’s Song,” Tobias Eckerlin, Film Academy Baden-Württemberg, Germany
SILVER: “The 12 Inch Pianist,” Lucas Ansel, Rhode Island School of Design
BRONZE: “The Shyness of Trees,” Sofiia Chuikovska, Loïck du Plessis D’Argentré & Maud Le Bras, Gobelins, France
DOCUMENTARY
GOLD: “Tides of Life,” Tatiana McCabe, University of the West of England Bristol, United Kingdom
SILVER: “Confession,” Rebeka Bizubová, Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, Slovakia
BRONZE: “I Remember,” Jane Deng, New York University
NARRATIVE
GOLD: “Dad’s Not Home,” Jan Saczek, Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School, Poland
SILVER: “Butcher’s Stain,” Meyer Levinson-Blount, Tel Aviv University, Israel
BRONZE: “Kubrick, Like I Love You,” Zefan, Columbia University
