THE LOLLY AWARDS
Over a decade ago, XPOSED introduced its friendly competitive side with the Lolly Awards! The awards were born out of a passionate night of love between a Lola and a Teddy Award, bringing together the extraordinary in queer experimental filmmaking. We know that competition is not nice, and we often debate whether to keep the awards. Here are three reasons for doing so: awards give visibility to filmmakers and their films, thus ultimately supporting queer voices in film distribution. Each Lolly Award comes with a €250 cash prize, which is our small financial contribution to future filmmaking. And by inviting a film jury, we create the space and experience for queer cinephiles to intensely discuss films over four days.
€250 cash prize!
XPOSED awards three short films every year with Lolly Awards, selected by the jury, and one feature and one short film, selected by the audience’s vote.
Our 2026 Lolly
Award Jury
Huei-Yin Chen
Huei-Yin Chen is a curator, writer and researcher. She has been involved in curatorial practices since 2014. She joined the programming team at Women Make Waves Int’l Film Festival Taiwan (WMWIFF) in 2017, and currently works as the Curator of WMWIFF. She also served as jury for various film festivals and as preliminary selection committee for Taiwan International Documentary Festival since 2022. She has independently curated and co-curated programs for Queer East, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, and more. Her interests include expanded cinema, gender in film and film historiography. Her writings can be seen in Film Appreciation Journal, Taiwan Documentary E-Paper, Funscreen, Film Comment, etc.
Jad Salfiti
He/Him
Based between London and Berlin, Jad Salfiti is a British-Palestinian journalist covering culture and politics. He has written for The Guardian, The Nation and Al Jazeera English. His video work includes Germany’s Palestine Problem, which won Best Use of Video at the 2023 WAN-IFRA Digital Media Awards Middle East. He previously co-hosted ARTE’s Europe Weekly and was a Queer Palm juror at Cannes in 2024.
Ashe Schaub
She/They
Ashe Schaub is a filmmaker, photographer and programmer. She is part of the MOIN Film Fund’s Talent Program, studies Film & Media Arts in Flensburg and is based in northern Germany. Her work evolves around the visibility, futures and pasts of queer, trans & black identities, the questioning of power structures and search for queer forms and aesthetics. During her studies she also researched trans representation in popular horror films and the purpose of destruction in anarcha-feminist films. Ashe’s short films and music videos were shown at numerous festivals throughout Germany. The documentary shortfilm FLENSBURG SÜSSBITTER, which she co-directed as part of a 5 person directing collective deals with a city’s lack of colonial reckoning. It premiered at Nordische Filmtage Lübeck and was awarded the German Youth Film Award, among other honors. She selected and programmed for Filmfest im Stadthafen Rostock, Kurzfilmtage Flensburg and as part of the queerfeminist art-collective bilderbanden.
Dan Sokoli
He/Him
Dan Sokoli is a sociologist, activist, and co-founder of Dylberizm, the world’s first Albanian-language queer media platform, as well as the founder of Prishtina Queer Festival, a cultural platform dedicated to celebrating queer art, memory, and resistance. With expertise in gender, sexuality, and human rights, he leads projects that bridge activism, storytelling, and cultural production. Passionate about archiving human experiences, he is a co-author of Stories of Resistance, a collection of Albanian queer stories, and Why Is Cultural Heritage Being Destroyed in Kosovo?, an analysis of institutional care for cultural heritage in Kosovo. He is currently leading pioneering work documenting queer lives during the Kosovo war. A great enthusiast of films, he has served as a jury member at the Cherry Pop Festival in Zagreb and has organized film screenings across Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, and the United Kingdom. He strongly believes in the power of community and collective solidarity as forces of resistance and transformation.
Past LOLLY AWARD
winners
2025
Lolly Award: Juju vs the possibilities of life and death – Htet Aung Lwyn – Thailand – 2024
Lolly Award: The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for Mabel Dove – Nnenna Onuoha – Germany – 2024
Lolly Award: Aliens In Beirut – Raghed Charabaty – Lebanon Canada – 2025
Honorable Mention: Hold Me Close – Aurora Brachman and Latajh Weaver – USA – 2025
Audience Award for Short Film: My therapist said, I am full of sadness – Monica Vanesa Tedja – Indonesia – 2024
Audience Award for Feature-Length Film: Trans Memoria – Victoria Verseau – Sweden France – 2024
