Academy Launches 52nd Student Academy Awards Competition, Ceremony Set for October

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced today it is now accepting entries for its 2025 Student Academy Awards competition.

The presentation ceremony for the annual international student film awards will be held in New York during the New York Film Festival at the Ziegfeld Ballroom on Monday, October 6, 2025, in partnership with Rolex. The brand is supporting the Student Academy Awards as part of its ongoing commitment to fostering excellence, achievement and the transfer of cinematic knowledge to the next generation. Last year’s ceremony was held in London.

The competition is open to full-time and part-time undergraduate and graduate students who have completed an intermediate-level or final graduation film as part of their coursework. Starting with the 2025 competition, students in certificate programs will be eligible to submit their final film project. Prior to this rule change, only individuals pursuing a degree could submit films for consideration. Additionally, schools no longer need to meet an accreditation requirement to be considered eligible. 

Students are asked to submit their films online using FilmFreeway, a widely used festival and competition platform. Each year, college and university film students from all over the world compete for awards and cash grants, with films being judged in the following categories: Animation, Documentary, Live Action Narrative and Alternative/Experimental. Complete rules and a link to the online submission platform are available at www.oscars.org/saa. The entry deadline for submissions is May 18, 2025. 

The winners of the 52nd Student Academy Awards competition will be announced in August. All Student Academy Award-winning films will be eligible to compete for the 98th Oscars in the Animated Short Film, Live Action Short Film or Documentary Short Film category. Past winners have gone on to receive 69 Oscar nominations and have won or shared 15 awards. 

The Student Academy Awards were established in 1972 to provide a platform for emerging global talent by creating opportunities within the industry to showcase their work.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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