2025 Arizona Underground Film Festival Award Winners
2025 was a great year for the Arizona Underground Film Festival. Many great films were screened and enjoyed! Here’s this years honors. See you next year!
Best Narrative Feature
2025 / 102 min / USA / Crime, Drama
Directed by Adam Seidel
Cast: Hayley McFarland, Sean Gunn, Joshua Burge
A roughneck commits a hasty and brutal crime after discovering his scumbag brother is planning to run off with his cheating wife, completely upending the only life he’s ever known. With Sean Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy, Suicide Squad) & Hayley McFarland (The Conjuring, Agnes, Lie to Me).
Best Horror Feature
2025 / 86 min / USA / Dark Comedy, Horror
Directed by Stephen King Simmons
Cast: Danny James, Emily Ashby, Bastain Jesus Carrasco Betemps
Flashback to 1997. LEAD BELLY is a coming of age horror film about two younger brothers visiting their recently divorced and estranged father during summer vacation. With plenty of bumps, twists and terrifying turns along the way. LEAD BELLY will keep the audience guessing until the final frame and leave them shattered.
Best Experimental
2025 / 3 min / USA / Experimental
Directed by Chloe Stella
Cast: Mia Henny
A young woman, haunted by an ever-present, invisible gaze, spirals into paranoia as she tries to escape its relentless surveillance. No matter where she hides, eyes follows, amplifying her fear and unraveling her sense of self.
Best Documentary Feature
2025 / 84 min / USA / Documentary
Directed by Elijah Sullivan
When a 60ft hole is discovered on a California mountain it sparks wild speculation in a small town shaped by its local mythology. Over a decade in the making, THE HOLE STORY weaves together a no-nonsense Forest Service investigator, a determined conspiracy theorist, and a young man with the summer job from hell into a paranoid tale of belief, obsession, and the human cost of misinformation.
Congratulations to all of this year’s winners!
Best Narrative Short
2025 / 23 min / USA / Drama, Thriller
Directed by Emma Ana Husaroll
Cast: Denise Smolarek, Jules Reid, Judi Schindler
Jackie clings to the past, her daughter prepares for the future, and her mother digs up old roots—three generations under one roof struggle with what to hold onto and what to let go.
Best Horror Short
2025 / 14 min / USA, Mexico / Thriller, Horror
Directed by Gordon Phillips
Cast: Nathan Nagvajara, John Potvin
A young man awakens in an unfamiliar apartment only to find himself under surveillance… and decaying rapidly. He relies on an enigmatic set of vaccines he discovers in the bathroom to slow his decline, but quickly plots revenge on his unseen watcher as his condition continues to deteriorate.
Best Animation
2024 / 7 min / USA / Animation
Directed by Shaun Clayton
Nine absurd short animated films, each of which depict a different awkward date.
Best Documentary Short
2024 / 9 min / USA / Documentary
Directed by David J. Aberle
Death Mask follows a Medicine Man, known as the “Native Exorcist,” as he leads a paranormal investigation into a land of restless spirits, using Indigenous knowledge to communicate with the unseen. When he encounters ancient beings and tormented souls, he is called to perform a once-extinct ceremony to restore balance.
Audience Award
Whiskey Dixie and The Big Wet Country
2025 / 114 min / USA / Musical, Comedy, Drama
Directed by Amanda Richards
Cast: Brandie Sylfae, John Bruner, Tyler Shilstone, Amanda Richards
Introducing Whiskey Williams, the iconic has-been honky-tonk diva whose rise and fall is the stuff of legend. From a one-horse town to the bright lights of Nashville, her journey takes a wild turn with a viral video—now set to a dubstep remix of her infamous “High-Speed Climax.” Caught between newfound fame and a tumultuous love triangle with Paul, the lovable grocer, and Dick Princess, the enigmatic bard of Blood Wand, Whiskey must choose: soar to stardom or burnout on a barstool at the Dixie Tavern?