Dublin Film Critics' Circle reveal award winners for DIFF 2025

The Dublin Film Critics' Circle have announced the winners for this year's Dublin International Film Festival.

On Falling, from Portuguese writer and director Laura Carreira, won Best Film. It follows Aurora, a Portuguese worker in a Scottish warehouse battling social isolation, loneliness and alienation.

Best Irish Film went to Ross Whitaker's Beat the Lotto, a documentary following mathematician Stefan Klincewicz and his attempt in 1992 to rig the Irish National Lottery in his favour.

Best Director was won by Maura Delpero for her WWII drama, Vermiglio. It centres on a small Italian village deep in the Alps, where a soldier fleeing the war arrives and disrupts the family dynamics of the local school headmaster.

Andres Veiel's Riefenstahl won Best Documentary, constructing a biography of German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl from complex and contradictory evidence, exploring her pioneering work and inextricable ties to the Nazi regime.

Born That Way, from director Éamon Little, won Best Irish Documentary. It reflects on the life of Patrick Lydon from Boston, and his establishment of the first Camphill Community in Ireland. Camphill Communities are residential areas and schools which provide support for the education, employment, and daily lives of people with diverse needs and abilities.

See the full list of award recipients below:

• Best Film - On Falling, directed by Laura Carreira
• Best Director - Maura Delpero, Vermiglio
• Best Editing - Ramon Zürcher, The Sparrow in the Chimney
• Best Actress - Shahana Goswami, Santosh
• Best Actor - Albrecht Schuch, Peacock
• Best Ensemble - Backstage, directed by Afef Ben Mahmoud and Khalil Bebkirane
• Best Documentary - Riefenstahl, directed by Andres Veiel
• Best Cinematography - Sverre Sørdal, Sister Midnight
• Best Debut - Good One, directed by India Donaldson
• Best Screenplay - Tracie Laymon, Bob Trevino Likes It
• Michael Dwyer Discovery - Ruby Conway Dunne, Molly Byrne and Alicia Weafer, Ready or Not
• George Byrne Maverick - Carrie Crowley
• Best Irish Film - Beat the Lotto, directed by Ross Whitaker
• Best Irish Documentary - Born That Way, directed by Éamon Little
• Special Jury Prize - Latina Latina, directed by Adrian Duncan