Every year, we hand out several Awards to celebrate the BUTtest feature film, the BUTtest short film, and the most BUTtiful performances. We also give out a special award to a personality whose accomplishments stand out in our genres.
BUTtest Feature Award
Awarded by the jury. Nominated films:
Blood Shack (La Cabane À Sang) | Arno Pluquet | 2024 | Belgium
Head Like a Hole | Stefan Macdonald-Labelle | 2024 | Canada
Witches of Everland | Daniel Ralph Zerbst | 2024 | Germany
BUTtest Short Award
Awarded by the jury. Nominated films:
Detlev | Fabian Driehorst | Germany
Disectoid | Lucas Gustavo Rendon | USA
The Resilience | Vadir Sottelo | Mexico
Set Menu | Denim Candenza | Spain
Bloody Beginner Award
Awarded by the BUTFF 2025 veteran organisers. Celebrating the upcoming BUT talent.
Super Awesome Award
Awarded by the BUTFF 2025 veteran organisers. Formerly known as the ‘Groundbreaker Award’, the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ and ‘BUTtiful Acting Award’, this is our prize to honour the cinematographic achievements of our main guest(s).
BUTest Performance Award
Awarded by BUT’s poets & performance programmers.
This year’s jury for the BUTtest Feature- and Short Award is:
Esmée de la Bretonière
Dutch actress, singer, and voice-over artist. She had her breakout role at just 17 years old, starring alongside Monique van de Ven in the 1992 cult horror film The Johnsons — which we once screened on 35mm at our festival! Later, she played a gangster’s girlfriend in The Delivery (1999), the debut feature from director Roel Reiné. She's worked on many other projects over the years, but these roles are what she’s best known for in our BUT-circles.
Paul Cotgrove
Director of The White Bus and founder of Southend-on-Sea and Horror-on-Sea; two annual film festivals featuring a wide variety of feature and short films by independent filmmakers worldwide, but especially locally. With Paul — also known as ‘The Guvnor’ — and his wife Tina, we will receive British royalty as far as we are concerned, because Paul is soon to receive a Medal of the Order of the British Empire (BEM) for his services to Film and British Film Heritage.
Sara Neidorf
Alongside being an awesome drummer (instructor, session musician, and more), Sara co-directs and curates Final Girls Berlin Film Festival, which showcases horror films made by women and non-binary filmmakers, and previously organized the film series Queer Film Klub and Women on the Verge. At last year’s BUT Film Festival in 2024, we screened a specially curated shorts block by Final Girls. Sara was born in Philadelphia and has been based in Berlin since 2012 and plays in the bands; Mellowdeath, This Ungodly Hour, Sarattma, Choral Hearse, and Mad Kate | The Tide.