Other Standout Winners of October 2025 at Indie Short Fest

While Dizzy captured the wild, electric pulse of youth this month — earning the title of Best Short of October — the other standout winners, both recipients of the Award of Excellence, turn their gaze inward to explore fear, morality, and human connection at the edge of collapse. From a young man confronting the end of the world in Nothing But the End to a driver uncovering the hidden confessions of his passengers in Unfair Routes, these films reveal that the most powerful journeys often unfold in silence, uncertainty, and reflection.

Nothing But the End by Tanguy Pichon (Switzerland)

Bleakly poetic yet deeply humane, Nothing But the End captures the quiet despair and fleeting beauty of a world teetering on collapse. Swiss filmmaker Tanguy Pichon constructs a haunting coming-of-age drama about the fragile psyche of a generation raised under the shadow of extinction.

The film follows Dax, a young man trapped in a remote trailer park, whose dreams of escape with his girlfriend Wendy fade as his mother spirals into paranoia, obsessively building a bunker while the apocalypse looms. Torn between love, duty, and dread, Dax drifts away from Wendy and toward the gravity of his mother’s obsession. As the world outside grows quieter, he must decide whether to cling to survival or embrace what remains of life itself.

What makes Nothing But the End so arresting is its subtle blend of realism and metaphor. Pichon uses sparse dialogue, desaturated light, and tactile cinematography to translate the numbness of anxiety into something cinematic and immediate. The result is a film that feels suspended between hallucination and heartbreak — echoing the tone of Gummo’s rural decay and the dark wit of The End of the F**ing World.

The performances are restrained but magnetic, grounding the apocalyptic premise in lived emotion. Pichon’s direction resists spectacle in favor of atmosphere; his apocalypse is not marked by explosions, but by silence, resignation, and the slow erosion of connection. The closing moments resonate with quiet devastation, leaving viewers suspended between melancholy and acceptance.

Based in London, Tanguy Pichon is a Swiss filmmaker whose work merges photography, theater, and cinematic storytelling into a singular visual language. Co-founder of Geneva’s O.U.T Studio, he directed L’Horreur (2023), Video Store (2024), and No Mad Land (2024), each marked by his distinctive aesthetic and narrative curiosity. With Nothing But the End, he refines that vision into something both intimate and universal — a quiet mirror held to a restless world.

As Pichon reflects, “Between climate crises, societal breakdown, and a growing sense of powerlessness, one question lingers: should we still believe in the future, or simply live before it’s too late?”

A meditation on fear, love, and the vanishing horizon of hope, Nothing But the End stands as one of the most emotionally resonant and visually confident works of this Indie Short Fest season.

Unfair Routes by Giorgos Logothetis (Greece)

With a restrained, observational eye and a compassionate tone, Giorgos Logothetis’ Unfair Routes transforms the confined space of a car into a microcosm of modern society. The film unfolds through the eyes of a professional driver who shares stories about his daily passengers — each encounter revealing more about the human condition than any simple conversation should.

As he says, for every passenger the ride is more than transportation — it’s a form of therapy. Through these encounters, Unfair Routes quietly brings to the surface a mosaic of social realities: toxic relationships, bullying, manipulation, remorse, and the quiet moral fatigue of everyday life. Without ever resorting to spectacle, Logothetis allows the dialogue and atmosphere to carry the film, creating an intimate emotional rhythm that feels both truthful and cinematic.

Anchored by the compelling performance of veteran actor Gerasimos Skiadaresis, the 25-minute drama unfolds with patience and nuance, revealing humanity in fleeting exchanges. Produced on a budget of €40,000, Unfair Routes turns limitation into strength, using its minimalist setting to amplify emotion rather than restrict it.

Born in Athens in 1983, Giorgos Logothetis graduated from the Film Directing Department at IEK AKMI, holding a professional training diploma with a specialization in directing. He began his career in 2002 as an assistant director at Alpha TV, later establishing himself as a versatile director across Greek television — from music documentaries and late-night shows to major live events. His collaborations with networks such as Ant1TV, Skai TV, Mega TV, and the public broadcaster ERT attest to his broad creative reach and technical mastery.

In Unfair Routes, Logothetis channels that experience into a more personal and introspective narrative. “It’s a film that explores the emotional and psychological state of its characters,” he explains. “It focuses on complex issues related to the human psyche and behavior — guilt, remorse, family conflicts, and moral dilemmas.”

With its unhurried pace and emotional honesty, Unfair Routes stands out as one of the most humanistic works of this Indie Short Fest season — a film that listens more than it speaks, and in doing so, says everything that matters.