New Zealand filmmakers Nick Mayow and Prisca Bouchet have won the top prize at the 2026 Melbourne International Film Festival Shorts Awards for their film Lion Rock.

The filmmakers received the City of Melbourne Grand Prix for best short film and its A$12,500 ($8,300) cash prize during a ceremony at Melbourne Town Hall on Sunday night. Melbourne Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece presented the award.

Set against the wild coastline of New Zealand, the 16-minute drama explores the changing balance of power between a mother and her son. The jury praised Mayow and Bouchet for creating an “emotionally precise and formally assured work” distinguished by its restrained storytelling and use of the landscape as an active dramatic presence.

The jury also singled out castmember Anton Falstie-Jensen for a performance capturing “both the vulnerability of childhood and the irresistible pull towards independence.”

The MIFF Shorts Awards and accompanying Talent of Tomorrow Party, presented by Armani Beauty, distributed A$56,500 across seven categories spanning Australian and international fiction, documentary, animation and experimental filmmaking.

Six of the seven awards went to filmmakers from Australia and New Zealand, with another presented to U.K.-based Australian director Matthew Berka.

The VicScreen Erwin Rado Award for best Australian short film, carrying a A$10,000 prize, went to Our Choir Has Always Been Travelling. The 10-minute film was directed by Judith Pungarta Inkamala, Marjorie “Nunga” Williams and Nelson Armstrong.

Telling the story of the Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s Choir through the voices, artwork and songs of its members, the film was described by the jury as “a moving testament to the power and beauty of making art together.”

The jury praised the filmmakers for presenting a story of community through multiple languages and forms of expression, including spoken word, song, drawing and painting. It called the result “a warm and deeply felt celebration of collective expression, cultural continuity and the enduring reach of song.”

The ceremony also featured the inaugural Armani Beauty Talent of Tomorrow Award, introduced this year to recognize an emerging filmmaker participating in the MIFF Accelerator Lab.

Valued at A$10,000, the award was presented to Andrew Dang and Jak Scanlon for Last Chance to Evacuate Earth.

“Short films have a rare freedom: They can bend form, sharpen feeling and build a complete cinematic logic in only a few minutes,” MIFF short-film programmers Mia Falstein-Rush and Raphë Lafleur said. “These winners are works of real precision and imagination; films with their own pulse, their own texture and grammar, opening a world far larger than their running time.”

The 2026 competition featured 108 films from more than 50 countries, screening across 15 curated programs. The MIFF Shorts Awards are Academy Awards-accredited and BAFTA-qualifying.

This year’s jury comprised director and screenwriter Gabrielle Brady, whose credits include The Wolves Always Come at Night and Island of the Hungry Ghosts; filmmaker and producer Hannah Ngo, whose feature Leviticus premiered at Sundance earlier this year; and Samantha Eckhardt, co-curator of Melbourne community film club Gay24 Films and a programmer for Tilde and the Melbourne Queer Film Festival.