Trieste Science+Fiction Announces Méliès d’Argent Winners 2025

The 25th edition of the Trieste Science+Fiction Festival concluded with the awards ceremony at the Politeama Rossetti on Sunday, November 2. Italy’s leading event dedicated to science fiction.

Organized by the film and audiovisual research and experimentation center La Cappella Underground, the 2025 edition once again brought the best of fantastic cinema to the big screen, featuring over 50 world, international, and national premieres, along with three competitions attended by directors, actors, and creators from around the world.

The 2025 festival welcomed more than 20,000 attendees to its screenings and conferences, confirming the success of this Italian event, which each year showcases the finest in global science fiction cinema.

And the Melies d’argent winners are…

The winner of the Méliès d’Argent Award for Best European Fantastic Genre Feature Film at Science+Fiction is “The Shrinking Man” (L’Homme qui rétrécit) di Jan Kounen (Francia/Belgio, 2025).

Oscar-winning French superstar Jean Dujardin always wanted to reinterpret Richard Matheson’s classic 1956 novel ‘The Incredible Shrinking Man’ and with director Jan Kounen’s visionary style, this new adaptation is a triumph. Shipbuilder Paul encounters a strange meteorological phenomenon while swimming and begins to shrink inexorably. With medical science powerless to help, when he accidentally finds himself trapped in his own basement, measuring only a few centimetres tall, he must fight to survive clashes with his pet cat, a mouse trap and a spider as his once-familiar environment becomes hostile. An existential experience about grappling with a diminishing sense of self.

The 2025 Méliès d’argent jury consists of Martin Myers, Ann Billson, and Mark Moore. Here is the jury’s statement:

The Méliès Award goes to a remake that respectfully reinterprets a well-known classic for a new generation. Without betraying its source, it draws inspiration from Richard Matheson’s 1956 classic novel.

The winner of the Méliès d’Argent Award for Best European Fantastic Genre Short Film at Science+Fiction is “Animalia” directed by Marius Rolfsvåg.

Set in a future where nature has reclaimed the world, cities are overgrown, and humans have turned into animals – except for a few, sealed inside an airtight city. When Alm is sent to rescue newborns from the animal-like humans, she discovers the humanity in animals – and the animal within herself.

The competition is organized in collaboration with the Méliès International Festivals Federation (MIFF) and is open to European-produced short films in the fantastic genre. The award is given to the short film that receives the highest number of votes from the audience.