The festival program is online now! Click through 120 programs, parties, talks and events and plan your festival week using the timetable! If you already know what you are looking for, you can also buy tickets directly via ourticket system. Some programs sell out quickly, so you better be fast!
Schnappt euch unsere Funkkopfhörer, packt eure Picknickdecken und Kissen aus und schaut mit uns Kurzfilme zwischen Parkbänken und Balkonromantik – das Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg lädt zum Open Air!
Samstag, 3. Juni 2023, 22:15 Uhr
Schnappt euch unsere Funkkopfhörer, packt eure Picknickdecken und Kissen aus und schaut mit uns Kurzfilme zwischen Parkbänken und Balkonromantik – das Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg lädt zum Open Air!
In Zusammenarbeit mit dem Quartiersmanagement von ProQuartier und mit Unterstützung des Bezirksamts Altona zeigen wir am Samstag, den 3. Juni ab 22:15 Uhr im Quartierspark der Mitte Altona ein Kurzfilmprogramm mit Filmen aus dem Stadtteil, übers Zusammenwohnen und dem einen oder anderen Klassiker.
Wer Lust hat, findet Getränke und einen kleinen Happen auf die Hand bei der Blauen Blume. Dort stehen auch Toiletten zur Verfügung.
Die Veranstaltung findet nur bei gutem Wetter statt. Von Änderungen erfahrt ihr an dieser Stelle.
Der Eintritt ist frei. Die Funkkopfhörer werden gegen einen Pfand von 10 Euro pro Stück ausgegeben.
The Jury Award in the German Competition, endowed with 2,000 euros, is awarded by a three-member jury. The Jury 2023 is:
The Jury Award in the German Competition, endowed with 2,000 euros, is awarded by a three-member jury. The Jury 2023 is:
Clara Helbig
She is a filmmaker and curator and works now as a programmer for the leading arthouse streaming service MUBI. Clara's artistic practice explores the interconnectivity between different actors and life forms on our planet and has been shown internationally at exhibitions and film festivals. In 2021, her short film disjointed won the German Short Film Award in the Documentary category.
Dani Rosenberg
The Death Of Cinema And My Father Too, his debut feature film, was part of the Official Selection in Cannes 2020 and won the Jerusalem Film Festival. His short and medium length films were shown in numerous international festivals including Cannes, Berlinale, HotDocs and IDFA. His comedy-drama series Milk & Honey has been purchased for adaptation in Germany and France. The Vanishing Soldier is his second feature film.
Ulrich Ziemons
He is – together with Ala Younis – co-head of the section Forum Expanded of the Berlin International Film Festival. Since 2006 he has worked as curator and project manager for Arsenal (Institute for Film and Video Art in Berlin) in the scope of Berlinale and in other contexts. From 2014 to 2020 he was a member of the short film selection committee of Dokfest Kassel. He has curated film programs for, among others, Kunstverein Leipzig, Kochi Muziris Biennale, National Museum of Contemporary Art Seoul and Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival. In 2014 he published the book "Aufzeichnungen eines Storm Squatters", a monograph on George Kuchar’s Weather Diary video series.
In the International Competition, a five-member jury awards the Hamburg Short Film Award, endowed with 3,000 euros, and the Deframed Award, endowed with 2,000 euros, to a film that deals with reality in a poetic, formal, analytical and unconventional way, ignoring all rules in a forward-looking way. It also awards the Hamburg candidate for the "European Short Film" award category of the European Film Academy. The Jury 2023 is:
In the International Competition, a five-member jury awards the Hamburg Short Film Award, endowed with 3,000 euros, and the Deframed Award, endowed with 2,000 euros, to a film that deals with reality in a poetic, formal, analytical and unconventional way, ignoring all rules in a forward-looking way. It also awards the Hamburg candidate for the "European Short Film" award category of the European Film Academy. The Jury 2023 is:
Nawar Al Qassimi
As the Vice President of Sharjah Art Foundation, she is responsible for the Foundation’s strategic planning, and strengthening the Foundation’s role as a catalyst and advocate for the arts in Sharjah, UAE; in the region; and around the world. Al Qassimi is a member of the Sharjah Tourism Advisory Committee and was a jury member for the Karama Film Festival in 2020.
Patrick Holzapfel
He works as a writer, film critic and curator. His articles and stories are regularly published in numerous publications in German and English language. He is editor-in-chief of the website Jugend ohne Film. In 2016 he received the Siegfried Kracauer scholarship of the German Film Critic Association. He has curated several retrospectives in Vienna, Berlin, London, and Bern. Currently he is working on his debut novel and a translation of stories told to him by a stone.
Adina Pintilie
She is a filmmaker, visual artist and curator; from 2022, she is also a professor for cinema at the HFBK University of Arts Hamburg. Spanning cinema, installation, performance and virtual reality, her works stand out through a uncompromising exploration of the human psyche and an ongoing questioning of film language conventions. Her feature film Touch Me Not won the Golden Bear at the 2018 Berlinale. Pintilie's visual art project »You Are Another Me – A Cathedral of the Body« has been selected to represent Romania at the 2022 Venice Art Biennial. Her film Don’t Get Me Wrong won the Golden Dove for Best Documentary at Dok Leipzig 2007. She is a member of the European Film Academy.
Emilie Poirier
She has been working in programming at the Montreal Festival du nouveau cinéma (FNC) since 2017. She is now head of short film and feature film programmer. She is also a member of the preselection committee at Busan International Short Film Festival as well as an independent curator, moderator and writer.
Yulia Serdyukova
She is a documentary film producer, photographer and curator. Member of Freefilmers cinemovement, co-founder of Filma. Feminist Film Festival. In her work and activism, relies on queer feminist approaches.
In addition to 133 competition films, we will also present selected, curatorial programs in the sections "Laboratory of the Present" and "Archive of the Present". This year, we continue our focus on migrant film in Germany that we started in 2022 – and also look at two Yugoslavian filmmakers and their work in and from Germany.
In addition to 133 competition films, we will also present selected, curatorial programs in the sections "Laboratory of the Present" and "Archive of the Present". This year, we continue our focus on migrant film in Germany that we started in 2022 – and also look at two Yugoslavian filmmakers and their work in and from Germany.
>> LABORATORY OF THE PRESENT: THINKING OF GERMANY
"Thinking of Germany at night just puts all thought of sleep to flight." In reference to these lines by Heinrich Heine, which are still used today to comment on problematic political events here, the "Laboratory of the Present" takes a critical look at Germany. A subversive, activist, but also fun attitude connects the five film programs in this section. They encounter the complex German history cinematically with a polyphony of identities and cultures.
The program "Blind in the Right Eye" (curated by Florian Wüst) bundles cinematic reactions to right-wing extremist violence and structural blindness of state institutions to racism and xenophobia. "The Most Beautiful Window in the World" (Florian Wüst) collages various TV excerpts and shows how unconventional, progressive and almost activist mass communication beyond ratings could and can be in the FRG. "Oh Pleasure Up Yours!" (Mara Marxsen) is aware of the complex relationship between gender, pleasure, power and images, but at the same time celebrates pleasure in films and through films. Wild, angry films meet in the program "Everyday Life and Turmoil. Counter-Narratives from the GDR" (Conny Klauß) with pockets of resistance, descriptions of daily life and the exasperation of an exhausted society. And "We need to talk" (Sarnt Utamachote) shows the diversity of migration stories from the Asian continent to Germany and makes clear how the filmmakers position themselves in the stories they tell.
>> ARCHIVE OF THE PRESENT: BACKLIGHT
The “Archive of the Present”, curated by Tobias Hering, focuses on the Yugoslav filmmakers Irena Vrkljan and Želimir Žilnik in two programs.
In the late 1960s, Želimir Žilnik was one of the best-known directors of the "Black Wave" - a series of films that dealt critically with Yugoslav society. In the mid-1970s, he moved to Munich for some time and also put his finger on sore points in the films he made there, addressing xenophobia and structural violence in West German society. In the presence of Žilnik, we will show short films shot in Germany, some of which were long considered lost, but have recently resurfaced in various archives.
Irena Vrkljan was a poet, filmmaker, translator and radio playwright. She lived between Berlin and Zagreb for 50 years, writing and narrating about life between these worlds that did not come together and yet became inseparable. When she began studying directing at the newly founded dffb in Berlin in 1966, she was 36 and already established in Yugoslavia as a television writer and poet. The four films she made at the dffb are explorat
ions of the place by a dowser, stories of "Shadow Berlin," but also critical positionings on the politically turbulent generation to which she belonged.
„The only thing wrong with the present is the bastard doesn’t exist, because the present is the future and the future is the past.“
This year's trailer is by filmmaker and artist Ann Oren. Her films have screened at festivals around the world - including in competition at the Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg - and won many awards, including Locarno and Chicago. Ann Orens works feature characters existing in the liminal space. In keeping with the festival motto, the Berlin-based artist asks the question: What does it mean to be in the present? What is "NOW"?
Selected films 2023: International Competition share
45th Parallel, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, UK, 2022 Africans With Mainframes, Kima Hibbert, USA, 2023 Afterlives, Michael Heindl, Austria/Tanzania, 2022 Alpha Kings, Enrique Pedráza Botero/Faye Tsakas, USA, 2022 Amok, Balázs Turai, Hungary/Romania, 2022
45th Parallel, Lawrence Abu Hamdan, UK, 2022 Africans With Mainframes, Kima Hibbert, USA, 2023 Afterlives, Michael Heindl, Austria/Tanzania, 2022 Alpha Kings, Enrique Pedráza Botero/Faye Tsakas, USA, 2022 Amok, Balázs Turai, Hungary/Romania, 2022
Andy et Charlie (Andy and Charlie), Livia Lattanzio, France, 2022 Apostles of Cinema, Cece Mlay/Darragh Amelia/Gertrude Malizana/Jesse Gerard Mpango, United Republic of Tanzania, 2022 Bezuna, Saif Alsaegh, USA, 2023 Bigger on the Inside, Angelo Madsen Minax, USA, 2022 Buurman Abdi (Neighbour Abdi), Douwe Dijkstra, Netherlands, 2022 Chomp It!, Mark Chua/Li Shuen Lam, Singapur, 2023 Dang wo wang xiang ni de shi hou (Will You Look at Me), Shuli Huang, People's Republic of China, 2022 Der Molchkongress (The Newt Congress), Immanuel Esser, Matthias Sahli, Switzerland/ Germany, 2022 Dildotectónica (Dildotectonics), Tomás Paula Marques, Portugal, 2023 Divlje cvijeće (Wild Flowers), Karla Crnčević, Croatia/Spain, 2022 Fala da terra (Voice of the Land), Benjamin de Burca/Bárbara Wagner, Brazil, 2022 I Can See The Sun but I Can't Feel It Yet, Joseph Wilson, UK, 2023 If You Don’t Watch the Way You Move, Kevin Jerome Everson, USA, 2023 Il faut regarder le feu ou brûler dedans (Watch the Fire or Burn Inside it), Caroline Poggi/Jonathan Vinel, France, 2022 Ilanga Alikho (The Sun is Missing), Advik Beni, South Africa, 2022 Mini-Mini-Pokke no Okina Niwa de (In the Big Yard Inside the Teeny-Weeny Pocket), Yoko Yuki, Japan, 2022 Koerkorter (Dog-Apartment), Priit Tender, Estonia, 2022 La herida luminosa (Daydreaming so Vividly about our Spanish Holidays), Christian Avilés, Spain, Leila, Fariba Haidari, Sweden, 2023 Les Sports X-trem, Gio Ventura, France, 2023 Los órganos internos de la Madre Tierra (Mother Earth's Inner Organs), Ana Bravo Pérez, Netherlands, 2022 Nå er jeg her, jeg også (Now, I also, am here), Camilla Figenschou, Norway, 2023 On The Birthday of The Wind, Dang Tung Bach, Australia, 2022 Our Pain, Shunsaku Hayashi, Japan, 2023 Pacific Club, Valentin Noujaïm, France, 2023 Pastoral Malaise, Ufuoma Essi, UK, 2022 Repetitions, Morgan Quaintance, UK, 2022 Saving Some Random Insignificant Stories, Anna Vasof, Austria/Greece, 2022 Terra Mater, Kantarama Gahigiri, Ruanda, Switzerland, 2023 Terror Has No Shape, Luis Arnias, USA, 2021 The Altar, Moe Myat May Zarchi, Myanmar, 2022 The Memo, Badlands Film Group, People's Republic of China, 2022 Through a Shimmering Prism, We Made a Way, Rhea Storr, UK/Bahamas, 2021 Un genre de testament (A Kind of Testament), Stephen Vuillemin, France, 2023 Upwards Tide, Daniela Zahlner, Austria, 2022 Wo de peng you (All Tomorrow's Parties), Dalei Zhang, People's Republic of China, 2022 West Lounge, Kevin Jerome Everson, USA, 2023 صوتك بس (Your Voice Only), Rana Wael Matar, Saudi-Arabia, 2023 هاتف صدى Hatef Sada, Anouch Basbous, France, 2021
Anima Overdrive, Andrea Winkler, Stefan Panhans, Germany, 2022 An Uncontacted Tribe, Hanna Noh, Germany, 2022 Can´t Help Myself, Anna Ansone, Latvia/Germany 2022 Der andere Tag (The Other Day), Timo Schierhorn, Germany, 2022 Dos amigos vuelven a casa solos de noche, (Two Friends Walk Home Alone at Night), Marlon Weber, Germany/Argentina, 2023
Anima Overdrive, Andrea Winkler, Stefan Panhans, Germany, 2022 An Uncontacted Tribe, Hanna Noh, Germany, 2022 Can´t Help Myself, Anna Ansone, Latvia/Germany 2022 Der andere Tag (The Other Day), Timo Schierhorn, Germany, 2022 Dos amigos vuelven a casa solos de noche, (Two Friends Walk Home Alone at Night), Marlon Weber, Germany/Argentina, 2023
Drei Bäume sind kein Wald (Three Trees Don't Make a Forest), Leonhard Hofmann, Germany, 2023 Einmal wieder dieser Junge sein (Being That Boy Again), Jan Koester/Lisa Violetta Gaß, Germany 2022 Es gibt keine Angst (Afraid Doesn't Exist), Anna Zett, Germany, 2023 Farewell Recording for an Observer of an Unknown Time and Place, Rita Macedo, Germany, 2023 Fleischwolf, Noah Fritzsche, Germany, 2022 Flut (Flood), Almourad Aldeeb, Germany, 2022 Hochofen II (Blast Furnace No.2), Su Yu Hsin, Germany, 2022 I Am A, Dagie Brundert, Germany, 2022 I Will Take Your Shadow, Ayala Shoshana Guy, Germany, 2022 In Limbo, Gusztáv Hámos/Katja Pratschke, Germany, 2022 Into The Violet Belly, Thuy-Han Nguyen-Chi, Germany, 2022 Mut Me Lule, Mona Rizaj, Germany/Austria, 2023 No Animal, Christoph Girardet/Matthias Müller, Germany 2022 Ralentir La Chute (Slow Down The Fall), Franziska Unger/Camille Tricaud, Germany, 2023 Ready for Ransom, Simon Dickel, Germany, 2022 Ring, Tanita Olbrich, Germany, 2023 Speaking Flowers, Conrad Veit/Charlotte Maria Kätzl, Germany, 2023 SSRC, Yalda Afsah, Germany, 2022 Tricky Disco, Sebastian Weise, Germany, 2022
Filmstill: Einmal wieder dieser Junge sein (Being That Boy Again), Jan Koester/Lisa Violetta Gaß
A Night at the Movies, Gabriel Tempea, Austria, 2023 At Night – Mozzie, Alert Carol/Edward Lyon, UK, 2023 Big Monster, Esther Weber, Germany, 2023 Bingo, Teemu Saarinen/Karo von Rutenhjelm, Finland, 2020 Electric Manoevres in the Dark, Vera Geisler/Reinhard Westendorf, Germany, 2023
A Night at the Movies, Gabriel Tempea, Austria, 2023 At Night – Mozzie, Alert Carol/Edward Lyon, UK, 2023 Big Monster, Esther Weber, Germany, 2023 Bingo, Teemu Saarinen/Karo von Rutenhjelm, Finland, 2020 Electric Manoevres in the Dark, Vera Geisler/Reinhard Westendorf, Germany, 2023
Howl by Gogol, Uliana Shalygina, Russian Federation, 2022 La fête est finie (The Party’s Over), Pierre Ives Clouin, France, 2023 Magical Caresses: Sweet Jesus, Lori Malépart-Traversy, Canada, 2022 Mr. Kuddles, Micha Gress, Germany, 2023 Nacht über R32, Felix Dierich, Germany, 2023 Nachtleuchten, Rafaela Range, Germany, 2019 Nachtschwärmer, Claire Walka, Germany, 2023 Night Train, Sofia Gutman, Israel/France, 2022 Prelude, Eginhartz Kanter, Austria, 2022 Proton in der Dunkelrutsche, Dorit Kiesewetter/Carsten Knoop, Germany, 2023 Rêves Party (The Sandman), Amélie Prevot/Marion Christmann, France, 2022 RIP, Morgan Quaintance, UK, 2022 Sleep Tight, Jonas Potthoff/Malte Pell/Tobias Sodeikat, Germany, 2022 Tehran, Masoud Moein Eslam, Iran, 2015 The Evenings Entertainment, Adams Vaicis, Latvia, 2023 The Terminator, Simon Ellis, UK, 2023 Until Dark, Kalle Anker, Germany, 2023 Vergissmeinnicht, Luzie Ilgner, UK, 2022
The motto of the 39th Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg is going to be… ⫸ NOW! ⫷
This year‘s edition looks at contemporary urgencies and current issues reflecting the past. It’s all about the present, our actions, here and now! Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg will take place from June 6 to 11. Which raises the question: Why not right NOW?
Here's this years Selection Committee for the German Competition 2023:
Florian Fischer, born 1981 in Tübingen, studied communication design, photography and visual studies. He was a participant in the Werkleitz Media Master Class and Berlinale Talents. In 2017, he was a fellow at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles and currently works as an author and media artist in Leipzig and Hamburg. His film "Umbra" won the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at the Berlinale 2019 and screened in the German Competition of the Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg in the same year.
Nadine Mayer moved from Stuttgart to Hamburg to study for her Master's degree in Culture and Media Management. In 2011 she started working for the Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg at the info counter, was responsible for the film market and joined the selection team for the German Competition in 2014. At the same time, she got to know the artist group "A Wall is a Screen", with whom she travels the country to project short films on walls. Her main job also revolves around moving images, most recently as a producer of documentary films for TV.
Here's this years Selection Committee for the German Competition 2023:
Florian Fischer, born 1981 in Tübingen, studied communication design, photography and visual studies. He was a participant in the Werkleitz Media Master Class and Berlinale Talents. In 2017, he was a fellow at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles and currently works as an author and media artist in Leipzig and Hamburg. His film "Umbra" won the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at the Berlinale 2019 and screened in the German Competition of the Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg in the same year.
Nadine Mayer moved from Stuttgart to Hamburg to study for her Master's degree in Culture and Media Management. In 2011 she started working for the Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg at the info counter, was responsible for the film market and joined the selection team for the German Competition in 2014. At the same time, she got to know the artist group "A Wall is a Screen", with whom she travels the country to project short films on walls. Her main job also revolves around moving images, most recently as a producer of documentary films for TV.
Stine Wangler studied at Leuphana University in Lüneburg and at Glamorgan University in Wales. She wrote her thesis in cultural studies about short films on the internet. Since 2012 she has been working at the Kurzfilm Agentur Hamburg and is responsible for world sales and purchase of licenses for short films. On the side, she occasionally works as a photographer. Since 2013, she has been a viewing member of the German Competition at the Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg.
David Kleingers is head of the digital department and strategic development at the DFF - Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum. As a film journalist and historian, he has published numerous articles and book chapters on German, European and international cinema. He is also curator of the Maple Movies Festival, dedicated to contemporary Canadian film.
Deniz Şimşek is a filmmaker and media artists living in Berlin. Having studied film in Istanbul at MSFAU, she is currently studying art and media at the UdK Berlin, under Prof. Thomas Arslan. Her works have been shown internationally in exhibitions, art and film festivals, including the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, Kasseler Dokfest, European Media Art Festival and Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg. Deniz is part of the 5th edition of the Federal Association AG Kurzfilm and German Films’ Emerging Artists program.
Selection Committee International Competition 2023 share
We proudly present: Our selection committee for the 2023 International Competition!
In her artistic films and video works, Vanessa Nica Mueller deals with questions of individual and collective memory, the human being in relation to urban space and nature, as well as with the tension between the familiar and alienation. She studied film and time-based media at Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg and at the École supérieure d'art Marseille. In addition to realizing and producing her own films, she works as a lecturer in the field of film education. In 2018 she was in Lebanon for an extended film research as part of a grant from the Goethe Institute and in 2021 she was a guest at Urbane Künste Ruhr as Artist in Residence 2021.
Sarnt Utamachote (ษาณฑ์ อุตมโชติ) is a nonbinary filmmaker, curator and co-founder of un.thai.tled, an artist collective from the German Thai diaspora with whom they curated the un.thai.tled Film Festival Berlin and Beyond the kitchen: Stories from the Thai Park. The video installation I Am Not Your Mother (2020) was exhibited at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and the short film Soy Sauce (2020) was screened at OutFest Fusion LA, Xposed Berlin and Queer East London 2021, among others.
We proudly present: Our selection committee for the 2023 International Competition!
In her artistic films and video works, Vanessa Nica Mueller deals with questions of individual and collective memory, the human being in relation to urban space and nature, as well as with the tension between the familiar and alienation. She studied film and time-based media at Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg and at the École supérieure d'art Marseille. In addition to realizing and producing her own films, she works as a lecturer in the field of film education. In 2018 she was in Lebanon for an extended film research as part of a grant from the Goethe Institute and in 2021 she was a guest at Urbane Künste Ruhr as Artist in Residence 2021.
Sarnt Utamachote (ษาณฑ์ อุตมโชติ) is a nonbinary filmmaker, curator and co-founder of un.thai.tled, an artist collective from the German Thai diaspora with whom they curated the un.thai.tled Film Festival Berlin and Beyond the kitchen: Stories from the Thai Park. The video installation I Am Not Your Mother (2020) was exhibited at the International Film Festival Rotterdam and the short film Soy Sauce (2020) was screened at OutFest Fusion LA, Xposed Berlin and Queer East London 2021, among others.
Nora Molitor studied Intercultural Communication, Spanish and History. She works for international literature, film and theater projects and festivals, including the Max Ophüls Festival, the Berlin International Literature Festival, the German-French stage festival Perspectives and Berlinale Forum Expanded. Jury activities for the FCDEP (Paris), BIEFF (Bucharest) and Encounters (Bristol). She also supervises the Border Crossers Program of the Robert Bosch Foundation and the Literary Colloquium Berlin. She is co-founder of transdemo e.V., member of LaborBerlin e.V. and curates and coordinates interdisciplinary projects in Berlin's independent scene.
Alejo Franzetti was born in Buenos Aires. He is a member of the selection committee of Berlinale Shorts and of Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg. He graduated in Film-Direction at the Universidad del Cine in Buenos Aires and was Meisterschüler by Thomas Arslan at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. He has made films of different lengths, such as “El contrabajo” (short), “La destrucción del orden vigente” (feature), “Panke” (medium length). His work has been shown at venues such as Torino International Film Festival, Mar del Plata International Film Festival, Festival Márgenes, Entrevues Belfort, Bafici, Anthology Film Archives. He was co-founder and programmer of INVASION, the Argentine film festival in Berlin . He has also engaged in formative projects such as Talents Buenos Aires, Fakultät Null/Interflugs, and Cinema en curs.
Theresa George studied ethnology, political science and journalism at the University of Leipzig and has since been working as a freelance film anthropologist between cultural theory and film (mediation). She teaches Visual Anthropology, works for film festivals (Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, Kasseler DokFest…), conceives film series / lectures / installations in diverse collaborations and co-developed numerous film projects. Currently, her main interest lies in filmmaking and film reception in the former GDR of the 1990s, which she intends to deepen by developing the artistic research VIDEO2089.
Sebastian Markt studied history in Vienna and Berlin, worked among other things in art house cinemas and has been working as a film critic for about ten years. He is a founding member of the main association Cinephilie, where he is primarily involved in the field of cultural film education. As a curator and festival programmer, Sebastian Markt is also active for the Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg and the junge dokfest Kassel. Since September 2022 Sebastain is the new head of the Generation section of the Berlinale.
Maike Mia Höhne is a German film director, film curator, professor of film, mother of two children. She lives and works in Hamburg. From 2007 to 2019, she played a key role in shaping the profile of the short film section Berlinale Shorts at the Berlin International Film Festival as curator and director. In 2019, she took over as artistic director at Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg. Since 2019, she has been a professor at the University of Applied Science Europe at the Hamburg Campus in the Department of Art & Design for the Film program.
Felix Piatkowski, born in Rostock, 15 years in Hamburg studying media culture, working at the Medienzentrum, in the cinema and since 2008 at the Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg. Moved to Berlin in 2017 and turned to psychoanalysis, but never turned his back on the short film festival and has now been there for 16 editions.
Anna Feistel studied Literature Art and Media Studies at University of Konstanz and Sapienza Università di Roma. Her passion for short films ignited many years ago organizing a student short film festival in a communal cinema. Since 2016 she has worked in several positions at Kurzfilm Agentur Hamburg. She is a member of the selection committee and programme coordinator of Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg.
Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg has signed the Green Charter for Film Festivals. With this we commit to fulfill the charter and act on the sustainability of our event.
The Festival
The Festival
The Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg is one of the most renowned and important European short film festivals. Since 1986, more than 400 films have been screened each year. The festival brings together cinema, exhibition, performative works, concerts and discourse. It shows films that react to the world in loud and sparkling, quiet and poetic, wild and calm ways. This way, selected programmes present the whole range of courageous, experimental and artistic films. Film makers, industry and audiences celebrate the short form together.
The Festival
The Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg is one of the most renowned and important European short film festivals. Since 1986, more than 400 films have been screened each year. The festival brings together cinema, exhibition, performative works, concerts and discourse. It shows films that react to the world in loud and sparkling, quiet and poetic, wild and calm ways. This way, selected programmes present the whole range of courageous, experimental and artistic films. Film makers, industry and audiences celebrate the short form together.
THE SHORT FORM
“The short form deals with aesthetic, societal and political questions in a radical and independent manner. It is a societal seismograph and offers a stage for tomorrow’s cinematic auteurs. Short films react quickly and freely to everyday life and reality. They are as manifold as the dreams that move the world. The film makers intervene in the public discourse and thus actively take position.” – Maike Mia Höhne, artistic director.
THE PROGRAMME
The three competitions of the festival, the International Competition, the German Competition and the Triple Axel present a distillate of the contemporary global short film scene. The selections’ range includes all possibilities of the cinematic language: Hybrid documentaries are presented next to essayistic experimental films, animations run side by side with classical narrative films. The Contemporary Laboratory section is conceived as a place for reflection of current issues. Invited artists and curators contemplate contemporary issues, conditions and commentaries in lavishly arranged curated programmes. These film programmes offer the basis for controversial, driven and forward-looking discussions. The Forum offers accompanying deepening rounds of talk in which the curators alongside guests from art and society further engage with the subject in discourses. In addition, there will be plenty of additional screenings, audio-visual art in the Open Space, performance, open-air screenings and concerts which turn the festival into a party. In cooperation with the Filmförderung Schleswig-Holsten, industry organizations and media partners, the festival also offers a platform for advanced training and industry networking.
THE YOUNG AUDIENCE
The Mo&Friese Junges Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg is a part of the Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg and dedicated to young audiences between the age of 4 and 18. The festival presents several contemporary and relevant short films in its international competition programmes. Film makers, audiences and trade professionals have a chance to get into conversations at several events. Furthermore, film workshops help to familiarize children and young adults with aspects of film making. You can find out more about Mo&Friese here: moundfriese.shortfilm.com
THE NUMBERS:
More than 400 short films from over 40 nations are being screened.
Among them, over 150 films run in seven competitions.
The juries and audiences award more than 15.500 € in total prize money.
Mo&Friese awards prizes worth a total of 3000 €.
The festival plays host to ca. 200 film makers from over 25 countries in addition to 400 trade visitors.
Over 15,000 visitors attend roughly 100 programmes and events in six different cinemas, the festival centre and open-air screenings.