SELECTION, JUDGING & AWARDS
Selection, Judging & Awards
TICFF is not a festival that hands its awards to whichever film scores highest. Films move through a two-stage selection, and every award is settled by the jury in a final deliberation.
01SELECTION PROCESS
Selection Process
TICFF does not rank submissions by score alone. Films move through the festival in stages.
First, the festival's selection team watches the submissions and chooses the Official Selections, weighing the strength of each film, the breadth of its perspective on cannabis, and how much we want to watch it together with an audience.
Each Official Selection is then watched, in principle, by every member of the jury, who evaluate it on criteria including:
- Craft and completeness of the film
- Originality and expressive power
- Insight into the theme
- What it leaves with the audience
- The significance of screening it at TICFF
Scores carry real weight in that judgement, but no award is determined automatically by ranking.
Each award is decided in a final deliberation that also takes the jurors' recommendations and comments into account.
The Grand Prix is decided in that deliberation, guided by a single question: which film does TICFF most want to send out into the world this year?
02AWARDS & PRIZES
Awards & Prizes
- Grand Prix
- The one film TICFF most wants to send out into the world this year, decided by the jury in a final deliberation.
- Best Feature Film
- For films of 40 minutes or more, including credits.
- Best Short Film
- For films under 40 minutes.
- Ethical Award
- Decided in the final deliberation, informed by the jurors' recommendations and their reasons.
- Jury Special Award
- For a film in which the jury saw something singular, again decided by recommendation and deliberation.
- Audience Award
- Chosen by audience vote, independently of the jury's judging.
Feature and short are decided by running time: 40 minutes or more, including credits, is a feature; under 40 minutes is a short.
03AUDIENCE AWARD
TICFF 2026 Audience Award
TICFF 2026 runs an Audience Award online, open to the Official Selections.
Viewers watch the nominated films through the official TICFF site and vote for the one they most want to support.
Viewing & voting periodOpens: around 15 November 2026 / Tokyo main festival: 29 November 2026 / Voting closes: 20 March 2027 / Results: end of March 2027
The voting period also covers the TICFF caravan screenings planned after the Tokyo main festival.
Whether you watch a film online, in Tokyo, or on the caravan, you take part in the same Audience Award.
Participation requires registration. Registered participants receive a participant ID and use it to sign in to the official TICFF site to watch and vote. As a rule, one person has one vote.
04ONLINE SCREENING
Online Screening
The Official Selections are the films the jury judges online.
For the films eligible for the Audience Award, we also run a time-limited online screening for registered participants.
Online screening is entered through the official TICFF site and delivered in an access-controlled environment.
Beyond the Tokyo main festival, TICFF uses the caravan screenings and online viewing that follow it to bring more audiences to these films and into the conversation around them.