2026 Denver Film Festival winners announced
See the 2026 Denver Film Festival winners, including top honors for 'La Bola Negra,' 'Good Help' and 'The River.'
Two Colorado documentaries tackling some of the region’s most pressing issues earned major honors at the 49th Denver Film Festival, according to the festival’s awards announcement released Tuesday, Nov. 3.
“Good Help,” directed by Rebekah Henderson and Lilah Park, chronicles Denver’s grassroots response to the arrival of thousands of migrants and won the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature. Mara Gasbarro Tasker’s “The River,” an examination of water scarcity and the people confronting its consequences, received the True Grit Award for outstanding Colorado filmmaking.
The awards capped an 11-day festival that ran Oct. 22-Nov. 1, showcasing 129 films from around the world. Winners were determined through audience ballots and juries of film industry professionals.
The festival’s top juried honor, the Krzysztof Kieslowski Award for Best Feature Film, went to “La Bola Negra,” directed by Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo. The jury praised the Spanish-French production as “an extraordinary work of imagination about love in the face of fear” that “examines intimate human struggles on an epic historical scale.”
Actress Sophie Okonedo also received special recognition for her “delicate, profound performance” in “Clarissa.”
The Maysles Brothers Award for Best Documentary went to “Whispers in May,” directed by Dongnan Chen and collaborators. The international production explores female friendship, earning praise from jurors for how it challenges “assumptions about agency and authorship in this formally daring and emotionally authentic rendering of a last adventure before adulthood.”
More 2026 Denver Film Festival winners
Peter Farrelly’s “I Play Rocky,” which opened the festival, won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature. The Audience Award for Best Short Film went to “We Were Here,” directed by Pranav Bhasin.
Two additional Colorado productions earned special recognition from the True Grit jury. Isabella Grace Cohn’s “Watch You Rise” received a special mention for emerging storytelling, while Erin Espelie’s “Ideas of Order” was recognized for artistic vision.
In the short-film competitions, Altay Ulan Yang’s “Hyena” won the Grand Jury Prize, while Bruce Tetsuya’s “End of Things” received the True Grit Short Film Award. Lea Favre’s “Hunting” took the Marilyn Marsh Saint-Veltri Award for Best Student Animation Short.
Special mentions in the shorts competitions also went to “We Were Here,” “Because Today is Saturday,” “Born to Kill,” “The Meloneers” and “The Undying Pain of Existence.”
The festival awarded $20,000 in documentary finishing grants through its Music on Film–Film on Music program, including $12,500 for “Holding on to Water” and $7,500 for “Asha Puthli: Taking Space.” Other festival honorees included actors John Leguizamo, Carrie Coon, John Cho, D’Arcy Carden and Indya Moore, along with filmmaker Liz Sargent.
The festival will return in 2027 for its 50th anniversary edition.
