One Day This Kid took home the main prize for this powerful story about queer identity
BY ELLA GAUCI, IMAGE BY ONE DAY THIS KID
The Iris Prize LGBTQ+ Film Festival crowned their winner yesterday (19 Oct), with Alexander Farah’s film One Day This Kid taking home the Iris Prize.
One Day This Kid tells the story of a first-generation Afghan Canadian man named Hamed who learns how to shape his own identity. Alexander is the second Canadian winner to take home the prestigious Iris Prize.
Tom Paul Martin, the chair for the 2025 Iris Prize, said: “A life that flashes before our eyes, this film is a remarkable feat. Every scene is so richly embroidered with detail, but it never feels overwhelming. That’s because the themes – of queerness being with us before we have the words to describe it, and the longing to reconcile it with our other identities – are so universal.”
The jury also gave special mention to Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh’s Two People Exchanging Saliva, a dystopian queer film about a world where kissing someone is punishable by death. Nana Duffuor’s Rainbow Girls also got a special mention for its “deliciously unapologetic middle-finger from Black trans women who’ve decided that if society wants to push them to the fringes, they’re grabbing everything in the store on their way out”.
Full details about Iris can be found here: irisprize.org
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