Simeon Halligan‘s ‘Past Life’ Takes Best Picture Honors
‘Volume 7’ by Panos Pappas and Despina Charalampous Named Best PKD Feature
The Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival has announced the award winners for its 13th annual event, which presented films, panels, screenplay competitions, and virtual reality experiences. The event was held from March 13-14 in Manhattan and explored the influence of novelist Philip K. Dick. For more information on this year’s lineup, visit https://www.thephilipkdickfilmfestival.com.
Congratulations to the award winners of The 2026 Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival:
Best Picture
Past Life
Director Simeon Halligan
United Kingdom
Jason (Aneurin Barnard), a journalist traumatized by his time in the middle east, is dragged to a TV show by his pregnant wife Claira (Pixie Lott). A celebrity Hypnotist (Jeremy Piven), is making audience members experience their glamorous past lives. Skeptical Jason thinks it’s all a con, until Tim, the hypnotist, takes Jason under with a click of his fingers, and he experiences the world through the eyes of a 1980s serial killer.
Best Philip K. Dick Feature
Volume 7
Directors Panos Pappas, Despina Charalampous
Greece
In an isolated City-Building marked 7, where human knowledge is preserved in the minds of the gifted and time loops through memory, an ageless man reappears across lifetimes, challenging love, rebellion, and the illusion of escape.
Best Sci-Fi Feature
Projection
Directors Evan Samaras, George Scoufaras
United States
A man is struggling with grief due to the recent death of his father. He copes by beginning to write and envision a reality where he and his father are bonding over their shared passion, filmmaking. The lines between the realities begin to blur until only one remains. Q&A with filmmakers and cast will follow.
Best Documentary
Saucers, Spooks and Kooks
Director Christopher L Graybill
United States
Saucers, Spooks and Kooks is a journey through the lesser known history of the UFO narrative, exploring its origins, and evolution, which still to this day reverberates in how we look at the current UFO phenomenon.
Best PKD Featurette
The Light of Dead Stars
Director Matthew Camfield
United Kingdom
A Cerebral, Sci-Fi Thriller, set in a near future cyberpunk dystopia. Agent Link (Gwilym Lloyd) a tired cop obsessed with his investigation of a string of unexplained murders, is thrown in with Jed (Medhi Duman), possessed by some form of entity, parasite, VALIS. Jed’s strange consciousness threatens the very existence of Links reality forcing him to face his own existential crisis. Inspired by PKD’s VALIS Experiences.
Best PKD Short
EDGAR: Enhanced Data Gathering Analysis Robot
Director Virginia de Witt
United States
In a near-future desert-scape, a suicidal woman discusses life, love and loss with an AI Android which resembles her estranged father, meanwhile her neighbor focuses on his passion for tap dancing.
Best Fantasy Short
Em & Selma Go Griffin Hunting
Director Alexander Thompson
United States
An allegorical 1930s-set coming-of-age fable about mothers, daughters & the beasts they hunt.
Best Supernatural Short
Hide
Director Brenden Hubbard
United States
From the Academy Award winning team behind “Curfew.” Still reeling from an incredible loss, a father (Shakey Graves) and daughter cling to a bedtime routine keeping them safe in a town where an unfathomable horror visits its inhabitants night after night.
Best Sci Fi Short
Are You a Human Being?
Director Matthieu Moerlen
France/Switzerland
Lucie and Jean-Michel are grappling with an existential crisis and a computer crash. In this dark comedy blending poetry and artificial intelligence. They search for the meaning of their lives!
Best Dramatic Sci-Fi Short
Karayr (Cave)
Director Neo Apelian
Jordan
In the aftermath of a biological war that reduced mankind to ape-like cavemen, a lone survivor tries to civilize a caveman. The story is set in a fictional Middle East, and takes place in the wake of a biological war that devolved people back to ape-like cavemen.
Best Animation
The Fortunate Son
Director Daniel Magyar
Hungary
The Convict is given the chance to regain his freedom by accepting a risky mission about saving the life of US President Gerald Ford 60 years in the past. The mission becomes complicated when the Convict travels through an experimental time machine, uncertain of when or where he will arrive and whether the mission will succeed.
Best Experimental Sci-Fi
Hollow Earth
Director Chad Adair
United States
An experimental film exploring the notions of time and the apocalypse. Based on T.S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men.
Best Culture in Sci-Fi
Lost in Your Thoughts
Director Marshall Leigh George
Canada
A woman undergoes EMDR therapy and enters a physical manifestation of her memories looking for her lost sister.
Best Isolation in Sci-Fi
Synced
Director Ilaria Serantoni
United States
After purchasing a device that allows her to experience her mother’s memories and emotions, a woman discovers that caregiving is not just an act of duty, but one of connection.
Best Web Series
16 Rachels (Season 2, Episode 1)
Director Keaton Smith
United States
Planet Earth was purchased by one of the wealthiest mining companies in the universe—forcing the entire human race to migrate elsewhere in the cosmos. Emotionally intelligent androids were hired to facilitate mass exodus and prepare Earth for demolition.
Best New Media
UBIK: Ontological Decay and Maintenance of Reality Fields AI
Director Dalibor Barić
Croatia
This experimental docu-fiction essay connects Ubik’s “ontological economy” with the idea that existence has a cost of maintenance, and that the characters themselves are the process of preserving the failure in which they live. In the end, Ubik is recognized as an early informatics theology: God is not the creator, but the debugger of reality
Best Short Documentary
The Warped Side of The Universe
Best Student Short
Europa
Director Jacqueline Elyse Rosenthal
United States
In a future where we have exhausted our water on Earth, three astronauts land on Jupiter’s moon, Europa, to steal a water sample. When they land, the ocean summons the sole oceanographer on the mission to undergo human nature’s ultimate test.
Best Virtual Reality
Chronological Experiments by The Naturalists Group
Director Jon Bernson
United States
A renegade collective of scientists films a pitch video for a group of anonymous investors in this VR mockumentary which explores the tension between the pursuit of truth and the financial power structures that sustain it.
Best Trailer
Saturni
Director Paul B. Frieling
United States
A pregnant artist retreats to a secluded residency run by a mysterious gallery, only to discover that her unborn child is a key to awakening an ancient Saturnian consciousness.
Best PKD Music Video
Crimson and Steel
Director Bruce Hunt
Australia
Best Sci-Fi Music Video
Neoshin Episode III
Director Sebastian Selg
Germany
After the invention of CRYONIC REALITY (CR) by EDEN Association, world leaders chose to discontinue the counting of time in 2073 and proclaimed the final year 2073X. CR is a virtual world of utopia that people can access to escape the bleak reality.
Best Sci-Fi Screenplay
Palo Alto Bang & Burn
Writer Craig Bettendorf
Best Supernatural Screenplay
Godhood
Writer Walter Maduro
Best Sci-Fi Prototyping
The Age of the Empath
Writer Steve Brown
Best Short Screenplay
Barrier of Meaning
Writer Mike Caravella
About The Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival:
“The core of my writing is not art but truth.” – Philip K. Dick
The Philip K. Dick Science Fiction Film Festival, which launched in 2012 as New York City’s first festival of its kind, honors the legacy of novelist Philip K. Dick. His enormously effective works composed of fictional universes, virtual realities, dystopian worlds, and human mutation served as a significant observation into the current state of society. The festival embraces original concepts and alternative approaches to storytelling, and since 2013, additional gatherings have been held in France, Germany, Poland, Rotterdam, and Los Angeles. The event was named one of the “25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World” by MovieMaker Magazine in 2022.
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