‘Shadow Boxer’ and ‘Spirits’ Lead the Way at TFS FEST 2026 as Toronto Film School Takes the TIFF Lightbox Stage

Shadow Boxer and Spirits stole the spotlight at TFS FEST 2026, with each short film taking home three awards from Toronto Film School‘s annual celebration of student and alumni talent across film, performance, writing, design, and gaming.

Shadow Boxer, Shahar Shamay‘s psychological drama about a boxer confronting the darkest version of himself, swept the craft categories, with Shamay claiming the trophies for Best Film, Best Screenplay, and Best Editing.

Matching it win for win, Spirits – Daniel Miller‘s haunting WWI-era ghost story about love, loss, and the hope found in a séance – claimed three trophies of its own, earning Best Director for Miller, Best Cinematography for Logan Totman, and Best Performance in a Female Role for Yaz Savas.

In total, TFS FEST 2026 saw 36 student projects showcased over 6.5 hours of screenings at the prestigious TIFF Lightbox, including 26 short films, six documentaries, four music videos, and four video games, alongside standout work in graphic design and live theatre. Selected from submissions across Toronto Film School’s programs, the nominated projects screened in front of a live audience, before the daylong event culminated in an evening awards ceremony, where winners were named across 20 categories.

As TFS’s Emmy and Golden Globe-winning President Andrew Barnsley noted in his opening remarks, the Lightbox venue carried its own significance – the same seats, the same screens, the same room where some of the world’s most celebrated filmmakers have introduced their work to audiences.

“Tonight is much more than trophies. It’s about celebrating the journey – the courage it takes to begin with a blank page, the determination required to keep going when deadlines loom and challenges appear, and the belief that stories matter enough to make all of that effort worthwhile,” he said.

“The future of our industry is sitting in this room, and based on what we saw today, the future looks exceptionally bright.”

Here are some of the award highlights of the evening:

Best Picture

The award for Best Picture – the top prize of the night went to Shahar Shamay’s 13-minute short, Shadow Boxer, which follows Myles, a boxer reeling from a brutal fifth straight loss, as sleep paralysis episodes pull him into nightly confrontations with a sinister shadow figure. Determined to fight his way back into the ring – and resisted at every turn by his disapproving father, Allen – Myles is ultimately forced to face his most dangerous opponent: himself.

Though Shamay couldn’t attend TFS FEST 2026 in person, his two stars Jack Copland (Myles) and Allain Lupien (Allen), accepted his trio of awards on his behalf.

“Winning these awards feels incredible, honestly,” Shamay said in an email interview following the event. “I put everything I had into Shadow Boxer. It wasn’t easy to make, but I had unbelievable people around me to at least make it fun.”

The film also marks a milestone in Shamay’s broader filmmaking journey. After directing several short films and the TV series Condemned Woodstock (streaming on Fibe TV1), Shamay is now developing his debut feature, with Shadow Boxer serving as a proof of concept: “To see these themes – grief, inherited expectations, unresolved relationships – actually resonate with people? That means everything,” he said. “It tells me the story is ready to go further.”

Shadow Boxer came with Shamay to TFS and developed there over the course of his studies, with several instructors backing it early on – Zahra Faraji, Leah Walker, Emilija Davidovich, Craig Mckay, Michaelangelo Masangkay, and Steven Hoffner among them. When Shamay was ready to move into production, instructor Alex Karakatsanis joined to help build out the team, bringing on producer Kimberly Lee, while Shamay brought in cinematographer Shae Paterson, whom he’d met at a previous festival screening.

“I have to give a special shoutout to Amanda Cestari Garcia, who did the sound design,” Shamay said. “A horror-drama film lives or dies by its sound, and she delivered. It was a joy to work with her.” He was careful to note that no one crew member outweighed another: “Every single crew member was integral to the film’s success, no exceptions. They gave their all during pre-production and across three days of filming.”

On the acting side, Shamay praised Copland for the “rare kind of focus, vulnerability, and openness” he brought to the role, and Lupien for the “gravitas, energy, and generosity” of his performance.

Best Director

This year’s award for Best Director, which recognizes vision and leadership behind the camera, went to Daniel Miller for his work on went to Spirits. The 11-minute short follows a woman haunted by love lost during the First World War, who travels to an eerie town where hope takes the form of a séance.

Miller took the stage visibly moved, thanking his cast and crew before turning to his family.

“I don’t what to say! Thank you so much to everyone involved. This was a real pleasure to work with everyone,” he said. “My mom’s here, my brother’s here… Thank you to everyone. I love you so much. I wouldn’t be up here if it wasn’t for you.”

Best Performance in a Male Role

The 2026 award for Best Performance in a Male Role went to Soroush Saber for his role as Dr. Drowsydoom in The Dolorous Tale of Forlorn, a nearly 14-minute surreal, satirical short that sees reckless choices turn into dark comedy with a haunting edge.

The film follows Midas, a young man who charges into life without thinking, desperate to escape his suffering. His search for relief leads him to the eccentric Dr. Drowsydoom and his loyal servant, Sir Bedivere – and what begins as a promise of a cure spirals into a transformation that’s as tragic as it is ridiculous, a reminder that getting what you want rarely looks the way you imagined.

Saber kept his acceptance brief, but made sure to thank everyone at TFS who shaped his work over the past year and a half, singling out the film’s screenwriter and director Isaac Sherk.

“Every single one of my faculty, everybody who’s taught me over the past 18 months – I came in to TFS fresh-faced, with some ambition, some talent, but no real direction,” he said.

“Everybody I got to work with took me and aimed me into a target, and I cannot be more thankful for you guys for everything that you did…Our job as storytellers is to make sure that people don’t forget about their stories.”

Best Performance in a Female Role

Yaz Savas took home Best Performance in a Female Role for her role as Eleanor in Spirits.

For Savas, the film holds special meaning beyond the win itself – it was one of her first projects at TFS, and where she met several of the collaborators she’d go on to work with again, including on her thesis film.

“This is the dream. We’re living the dream right now,” she said, before thanking the cast and crew. “Spirits is one of the first things I ever did at TFS. It’s how I got to meet the people I also took on for my thesis film – hopefully people I’ll work with for the rest of my life.”

She thanked director Daniel Miller and producer Roshannie Jeyachandrakanthan directly: “Thank you so much for believing in me and having me and trusting me with Eleanor. It was so fun,” she said, noting how she was looking forward to working with the entire cast and crew of Spirits again soon.

“I can’t wait to be on set with you guys again. It’s what I crave every day.”

Video Game of the Year

All Flocked Up took home both the awards for Video Game of the Year and Video Game Technical Achievement.

The sandbox adventure casts players as Peep, a mischievous pigeon on a chaotic search for its lost flock, swooping across rooftops, streets, and parks to cause maximum bird-brained mayhem – stealing snacks, knocking things over, and leaving a “mark” on an unsuspecting city full of secrets and very unfortunate locals.

Art Lead Emma Shaw and Art Director Matthew Serafino accepted the Video Game of the Year award on behalf of the team behind the game, Good Flocking Games.

“We just want to say thank you so much for this honour,” Shaw said. “Thank you so much to the faculty for seeing the vision, and thank you so much to our team for executing it.”

She closed with a nod to the game’s unlikely inspiration: “It just goes to show how much even the smallest pigeon in the city of Toronto can inspire a game that would win an award. So, don’t forget to give your local pigeons a little more love. They deserve it!”

Best Live Performance

The award for Best Live Performance recognizes the top fifth-term play staged by students in TFS’s Acting for Film, TV & the Theatre program. This year’s honour went to 6 Visitors, director Andy Massingham ‘s contemporary adaptation of Luigi Pirandello’s 1921 satire Six Characters in Search of an Author  – reworked, as Massingham put it, with his young cast’s particular talents in mind.

Massingham described taking on the production as a gamble that paid off, crediting both his cast and the show’s source material: “We took a really big gamble on this. I’m really thrilled. All these shows were amazing, and all these actors were amazing. I love TFS, and I love the actors. I love you all.”

He pointed to the strength of Pirandello’s original work as part of what drew him to the project: “Six Characters in Search of an Author is one of the greatest plays that you can draw from. We just had such a good time doing it, and we had no idea if it was gonna work.”

He closed by thanking his cast directly, wishing they could all have been there to share the moment with him.

Best Screenplay

The award for Best Screenplay recognizes the strongest writing across the festival, and this year’s honour went to Shahar Shamay for Shadow Boxer – which also earned him Best Editing honours. His two stars Jack Copland and Allain Lupien accepted the awards on his behalf.

For Shamay, the script came from a deeply personal place.

“The best screenwriting advice I ever received was simple: write what you know,” he said. “Shadow Boxer is rooted in my relationship with my father and the grief that followed after losing him to cancer, in the sleep paralysis episodes that returned for the first time since I was a kid during his illness, and in the slow realization of how deeply unresolved relationships shape who we become.”

That personal history finds its outlet on screen through boxing and psychological horror – Shadow Boxer‘s story of Myles, a fighter haunted by a sinister shadow figure as he battles his way back into the ring against his father’s wishes, externalizing the weight of inherited, unspoken expectations.

Best Cinematography

The 2026 award for Best Cinematography went to Logan Totman for his work on Spirits.

Accepting the award, Totman was quick to heap praise on his collaborators for helping him shape the film’s visual achievements.

“I take credit for a bunch of things that weren’t even really my ideas, but I get to put my name on them,” he joked. “Thank you to our director Daniel (Miller), to production designer Roshannie (Jeyachandrakanthan) for making the background of our images look so amazing, and to everybody who worked on the lights and camera team.”

Best Documentary

Best Documentary went to Aditya Arun for Bittersweet: Living on Insulin Time, which follows Lester Mascarenhas as he navigates life with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus.

Arun used his acceptance to thank three people in particular – first of all, his wife, Priyanka, who he joked he’d told not to expect a win.

He also credited fellow nominee Gaviota Olivera Hernandez, whose documentary The Silent Addiction was also up for the award: “She reminded me, two days before the deadline, to submit mine. So I owe her one,” he laughed.

Above all, Arun pointed to Mascarenhas himself as the reason the film resonated. “It was a pretty emotional story that he had to put out there, and he wears his soul in it,” Arun said. “I’m pretty lucky that I was there to just capture it – because it was all him. I think he’s going to be pretty happy seeing this.”

Best Production Design

The award for Best Production Design went to Seth Rule for his work on The Dolorous Tale of Forlorn – the same surreal, satirical short that also earned Soroush Saber Best Performance in a Male Role.

Rule was quick to share credit for the win.

“I’d love to thank you all, but even though it may be my work, I couldn’t have done it alone,” he said, thanking director Isaac Sherk for the opportunity.

Best Sound

Nathan Scott won the award for Best Sound for his work on Calaverita A La Muerte (A Death Poem Dedicated to Death), which follows a former hitman who, on his deathbed, is visited by Death – not to beg for more time, but to confront a moment from his past when she may have saved him. As the two revisit a near-death encounter, secrets unravel, and he comes to realize that Death has been in love with him all along.

Scott wasn’t on hand to accept the award himself, so the film’s director, Luis Armando Pacheco Larrea spoke on his behalf.

“It’s great that we won this. Thank you so much,” he said. “We passed many, many days without sleeping, doing the sound for this film, and in the end, I think it’s all working.”

Visual Excellence Award in a Video Game

The Visual Excellence Award in a Video Game went to Kynetic Flux, a fast-paced, momentum-driven parkour game set in an escape from an abandoned alien city, where keeping up speed is the only way to stay alive – the faster you move, the harder you can fight, and the faster you can get home.

Art and Narrative Director Abbigail Chapman accepted on behalf of the team, visibly surprised by the win.

“I was so not expecting to be up here,” she said. “The majority of my team – I love them all to death. We all love each other so much. Working on Kynetic Flux caused so many arguments, but it also brought so many of the greatest friendships together.”

She closed by accepting on behalf of the teammates who couldn’t attend TFS FEST: “A gigantic thank you to all of my teammates, my leads, who are in far-away provinces and cities and couldn’t be here tonight. I’m here to accept this for all of them.”

Other winners of the night included:

Best Music Video

Ralf Fouad Daccache for Devastated

TFSO Best International Short

Veronika Marsland for Brewing Belonging

TFSO Best Production

David Jordao for Inspiration in White

TFSO Best Canadian Short

Olivia-Autumn Rennie for The Human Masterpiece: Andrew’s Story

Best Motion Graphic Artist

Terry Ranero

Best Art Direction

Julia Victor Dit Vouillon

TFS FEST 2026 would not have been possible without the generous support of the partners who share Toronto Film School’s commitment to nurturing the next generation of creative talent. A heartfelt thank you to our Founding Bursary Partners – BMO, Creative Arts Financial, Blink 49 Studios, and Shaftesbury – and our Community Partners – Gallagher, Cineplex, and MUBI – for helping bring the evening to life, and to our whose ongoing investment in TFS students helps turn ambition into opportunity.