#EOFF2025 Audience Choice Award Winners
🎥 The audience has spoken.
With over 800 ballots cast, the people have chosen their favorites — a true celebration of the connection between filmmakers and audiences that defines the Eastern Oregon Film Festival experience. Each vote reflects laughter, tears, inspiration, and the awe we all shared throughout our festival venues in La Grande.
The results are in for the 2025 Audience Choice Awards for Best Short and Best Feature Film at the sixteenth annual Eastern Oregon Film Festival — honoring the stories that moved us most and the artists who brought them to life.
Filmmaker Matthew Thomas Ross joined festivalgoers to share a deeply personal journey through his rare cancer diagnosis. Blending expansive childhood home videos, candid interviews, and intimate self-documentation, Into the Unknown: My Cancer Story offers an unflinching yet profoundly human portrait of resilience.
We are honored to present the 2025 Audience Choice Award for Best Feature Film to Into the Unknown: My Cancer Story and filmmaker Matthew Thomas Ross.
Filmmaker Amy Roy joined us at #EOFF2025 to share her moving short film Comets. The story follows Nan, an eighty-year-old woman living in a nursing home, frightened and fading as Alzheimer’s steals her memories and familiarity. Each day she asks to “go home”—until the arrival of a new resident rekindles a spark of hope.
Over three days at the festival, Amy connected deeply with audiences, who were profoundly touched by Comets and its tender portrayal of love, loss, and memory.
We are proud to present the Audience Choice Award for Best Short Film (2025) to Comets and filmmaker Amy Roy.
The Eastern Oregon Film Festival is honored to celebrate these Audience Choice Award winners — powerful stories that resonated most deeply with those who filled our theaters and shared in this year’s cinematic journey. These films embody the heart of #EOFF2025: authentic voices, bold creativity, and meaningful connection between artists and audiences.
Explore the Juried Awards article to discover this year’s top honors in both documentary and narrative categories — for feature and short films alike — and stay tuned for the upcoming Director Awards announcement as we continue to spotlight exceptional storytelling from this year’s festival.