41st Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg: 3–8 June 2025 +++ CALL FOR ENTRIES +++ 41st Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg: 3–8 June 2025 +++ CALL FOR ENTRIES +++ 41st Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg: 3–8 June 2025 +++ CALL FOR ENTRIES +++
Call for Entries: 41st Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg share
We’re excited to announce that submissions are now open for the 41st Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg and the Junges Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg Mo&Friese! You can find all further information about the submission here.
The festival will take place from June 3 to June 8, 2025. Mark your calendars for the next edition and celebrate with us.
!!! Due to the weather conditions, our pre-event Open Air has to be cancelled. See you at the festival!
Friday, 31 May, 10:15 PM, Quartierspark Neue Mitte Altona
!!! Due to the weather conditions, our pre-event Open Air has to be cancelled. See you at the festival!
Friday, 31 May, 10:15 PM, Quartierspark Neue Mitte Altona
Can't wait seeing shorts on a big screen? Pack your picnic blankets and watch short films between park benches and balcony romance – even before the festival starts!
We are showing a neighborhood short film program as a preview of the 40th Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg. Admission is free, you'll find drinks on hand at the Blaue Blume and wireless headphones will be handed out for a deposit of €10 each.
The event will only take place in good weather. Up-to-date information can be found here.
The missionary had one, companies claim it and heroes and heroines are on it for ages: a mission. For our Triple Axel Competition 2025, we are particularly interested in that version of mission that seems impossible.
The missionary had one, companies claim it and heroes and heroines are on it for ages: a mission. For our Triple Axel Competition 2025, we are particularly interested in that version of mission that seems impossible.
Of course, Tom Cruises action movies come to mind immediately, but doesn't everyone - and many train stations as well - have a mission that is perhaps programmed to fail? We are also happy to see cryptic interpretations, so brainstorm ideas and make films for our Triple Axel 2025: as always, the aim is to make a film on the given topic ("Mission Impossible") in no more than three minutes. Whoever achieves this will be in the running for the audience prize (1,000 euros) on a legendary night at the Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg. You can submit your mission to us from November. Looking forward, happy failure!
We are very pleased to announce the winners of the 40th Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg!
We are very pleased to announce the winners of the 40th Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg!
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
Jury: Manuel Abramovich, Aboozar Amini, Flóra Anna Buda, Lucía Salas, Greta Snider
HAMBURG SHORT FILM AWARD (3.000€): Kim Torres: The Moon Will Contain Us
Jury Statement: "We would like to award the main prize to a film that creates a true collaboration. Two generations meet, and by doing a film they form a community. This community decides to trace a memory, which could be also a memory of the future. By exploring sensitively a place and the ways everyone has to walk through it, and the details of this relationship, this film creates its own ways to do films, one that is imaginative, affective, and shared."
DEFRAMED AWARD (2.000€): Jonelle Twum: I Think of Silences When I Think of You
Jury Statement: "A unique perspective on migration that is rarely seen on cinema. Using the archive vividly, this film reclaims home movies and family movies in a way that is both joyful and though-provoking. We want to give the Deframed award to this film which, with very few elements (a fragment of the past and a few images from the present) creates a whole affective universe."
HAMBURG SHORT FILM CANDIDATE FOR THE EUROPEAN FILM AWARDS:
Sara Kontar: 3350 KM
Jury Statement: "There are some people amongst us who only have music left to connect with their fading memories. What they do is to look for those lost words, those melodies that can give a sense of home. We would like to award the European Film Academy nomination to 3350 km by Sara Kontar."
SPECIAL MENTION:
Zuza Banasińska: Grandmamauntsistercat
Jury Statement: "A film in which 1 + 1 is not 2 but three: a feminist perspective of the archive, which doesn’t use images, but has a conversation with them to create an idea of what places people occupied in them, and what places they can occupy now. Recovering pieces of East-European heritage, this film creates room for thoughts about the past and the present. We would like to give a special mention to Grandmamauntsistercat, by Zuza Banasińska."
GERMAN COMPETITION
Jury: Toby Ashraf, Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck, Gerald Weber
JURY AWARD (2.000 €): Eva Könnemann: That's All from Me
Jury Statement: "Eva Könnemann skillfully interweaves reality and fiction, combines video letters with crowded long shots and goes to unexpected places to find answers to her question: How do you remain an artist once you have become a mother? With its subtle humor and precise sense of timing, the film develops a unique magic and puts a smile on your face while the wild geese fly into the sky."
SPECIAL MENTION Miranda Siegel: Ignore Your True Feelings at Your Own Peril
Jury Statement: “Before we hear the sound of convenient elevator music, Miranda Siegel throws up. She continues to do so every day and documents this inconvenient truth even during her stay in the psychiatric ward. Her severe struggle against her own body is juxtaposed with her dry sense of humor in this smart and stunning video journal that makes visible what is otherwise hidden – from society or from oneself. Kudos to her courage, frankness and irony in solving this and other puzzles."
TRIPLE AXEL COMPETITION (1.000€):
Olaf Held: Spätsommer 91
The Audience Award is supported by the Hamburgische Kulturstiftung.
ARTE AWARD:
José Luis Jiménez Gómez: The Reign of Antoine
The competition spanning ARTE Short Film Award consists of the purchase of one film (up to 6,000 euros) and its subsequent screening in the »Kurzschluss« programme by ARTE, the Franco-German cultural TV channel.
AUDIENCE AWARD (1500€):
Franzis Kabisch: getty abortions
Der Publikumspreis, dotiert mit 1.500 Euro, geht wettbewerbsübergreifend an einen Film aus dem Internationalen oder Deutschen Wettbewerb.
MO&FRIESE AWARDS:
Friese-Award: The Mystery of Missing Socks – Oskar Lehemaa, special mention: Semiotics of the Home – Hsin-Yu Chen/Jessi Ali Lin Mo-Award: The Creators – Madeleine Homan, special mention: Circle – Yumi Joung Neon-Award: Bubbling – Che-ming Chang, special mention: Papillon – Florence Miailhe Nomination ECFA Short Film Award: Yuck! – Loïc Espuche, special mention: Death to the Bikini! – Justine Gauthi
The Catalog of the 40th Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg share
The following artists decided to withdraw their films from the festival and join the call issued by “Strike German” in solidarity with the Palestinian People. We respect their decision and we have decided not to replace withdrawn films. We very much hope that we will have the chance to show their works in the future.
The Jury Award in the German Competition, endowed with 2,000 euros, is awarded by a three-member jury. The Jury 2024 is:
The Jury Award in the German Competition, endowed with 2,000 euros, is awarded by a three-member jury. The Jury 2024 is:
Toby Ashraf works as a curator, moderator and film critic. He has written for taz, Sissy and numerous other publications and moderates film and literature talks for the Berlinale and the international literature festival berlin, among others. In 2015 he won the Siegfried Kracauer Prize for Best Film Criticism. In 2014, he founded the Berlin Art Film Festival, which he curated and directed independently until 2018. Toby Ashraf has curated film series for the Goethe Institutes of North America and Calcutta, among others, and was part of the advisory selection committee of the Panorama section of the Berlinale in 2022. In 2023 he was artistic co-director of the FIRST STEPS Awards.
Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck works as a filmmaker, videoartist and film curator, and creates videoprojections for theater, opera, dance and music concerts as well as video installations for exhibitions and museums. She teaches at art schools and has been working for film festivals as a programmer, presenter (Berlinale Shorts, Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, Zebra Poetry Film Festival, Filmwinter Stuttgart, Pictoplasma) and member of the jury for more than 25 years. She co-runs the shorts/ salon, and since 2019 she is head of Berlinale Shorts, the official competition for short films at the Berlinale.
Gerald Weber studied history, geography, philosophy and film studies in Vienna and Barcelona. He is a founding member of »Projektor: Diskussionsforum Film und Neue Medien« and was co-organizer of the international symposium »film[SUBJECT] theory« (1996). Since 1997 he has been working for sixpackfilm in the distribution of Austrian documentary, short and experimental films. As part of sixpackfilm, he has organized numerous film-related events and presentations of Austrian and international film and video art in Austria and abroad. Weber also gives lectures, moderates film talks and works as a curator and journalist.
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 2024 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 2024 is:
Manuel Abramovich is a filmmaker and artist born in Buenos Aires in 1987 and based in Berlin. His work explores different ways of staging intimacy. His films have been awarded worldwide, among them Blue Boy (Berlinale Silver Bear and Deutscher Kurzfilmpreis 2019), Soldier (Berlinale 2017), and Pornomelancolia (Best Cinematography at San Sebastian). He was a member of the Berlinale Talents Selection Committee in 2019 and 2020 and is a member of the Deutsche Filmakademie. Besides his work as a director, he is a film mentor and a teacher at several film schools and universities. Since 2021, he has been directing »DIP: Documentary, Intimacy, and Staging«, a one-year online program for international artists and filmmakers. He is currently finishing his fifth feature film Croma.
Aboozar Amini trained as a visual artist at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam and received his Master of Fine Arts in filmmaking from London Film School. He is an alumnus of IDFA Academy, Berlinale Talent Campus, Cannes Cinéfondation La Résidence and a fellow at Akademie der Künste in Berlin. His works include video art, documentaries, and fiction aimed at orchestrating and transcending the facades of reality in order to creep under its lingering surface, inviting us to explore a heightened, nuanced perception of the world.
Flóra Anna Buda was born and raised in an artistic environment in the outskirts of Budapest. Her studies in fashion, her love for drawing and interest in storytelling led her to animation. Her MOME graduation film called Entropia premiered at the 69th Berlinale and won the 33th Teddy Award. She became an intern at Miyu Productions where later she made her first professional film 27. The film had its premiere at Festival de Cannes where it won the Palme d’Or for short films and went on to win the Crystal du Court Métrage at Annecy Festival. Currently, she is developing new projects. One of her main goals is to keep searching for new ways of creating diverse universes, telling honest stories and finding a way to create an artistic project out of her recent interest, with an open mind.
Lucía Salas is an Argentinian writer, programmer, and filmmaker based in Spain. She is a co-editor of the film magazine La vida útil, programmer at Punto de Vista and Woche der Kritik, teacher in the curatorial studies program at Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola. She collaborated with Con Los Ojos Abiertos, Jugend ohne Film, Viennale, IFFR’s Critic’s Choice, DocumentaMadrid, DocLisboa, Margenes, among others. She has co-directed the non-fiction feature Implantación (2016) and several short films together with LaSiberia Cine. She studied Image and Sound Design at the University of Buenos Aires, has an MA in Aesthetics and Politics from CalArts (thanks to a Fulbright scholarship) and is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Communications program in the cinema department at Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
Greta Snider has made films since discovering the art form at Antioch College in Ohio, and promptly moved to San Francisco to join a thriving low-budget experimental film scene, where she continues to make, screen, and teach about cinema. In her work, Snider utilizes a combination of original and archival material to create nonfiction art cinema of a personal nature. Her single screen films on 16mm lean heavily on the creative use of montage, interweaving the personal and historical in a number of short essay films. Her stereoscopic performances and installations take the materiality of film and family photos, to reshape themes of memory, loss, and personal histories in a more intimate, affective experience. She has screened in museums throughout the world, and also in bars, alleyways, and once, at an all-night international rave party in a penthouse in Tokyo’s district Shibuya. Snider teaches experimental filmmaking at San Francisco State University, where she is faculty advisor to The Archive Project.
"I can't see a thing!" – From light breezes to thunderstorms, our trailer reflects what “cloudy” can look like – and how it can obscure our vision. Thanks to NEOZOON for daring to head with us into the unknown!
Selected films 2024: International Competition share
27, Flóra Anna Buda, France, 2023 (Out of Competition) 3350 KM, Sara Kontar, Arab Republic Syria/France, 2023 Avaler la poussière (Swallowing Dust), Achille Bocquier, France, 2023 Boléro, Nans Laborde-Jourdàa, France/Italy, 2023 Bye Bye, Bowser, Jasmin Baumgartner, Austria, 2023
27, Flóra Anna Buda, France, 2023 (Out of Competition) 3350 KM, Sara Kontar, Arab Republic Syria/France, 2023 Avaler la poussière (Swallowing Dust), Achille Bocquier, France, 2023 Boléro, Nans Laborde-Jourdàa, France/Italy, 2023 Bye Bye, Bowser, Jasmin Baumgartner, Austria, 2023
Doris & Bettan - Marbella Mayhem, Ellen Ekman, Sweden, 2023 DUCK, Rachel Maclean, United Kingdom, 2024 Este es el diario no tan secreto de Raquel (This Is Raquel's Not-so-secret Diary), Raquel Agea Ramos, Spain, 2023 El Reinado de Antoine (The Reign of Antoine), José Luis Jiménez Gómez, Kuba, 2023 getty abortions, Franzis Kabisch, Germany/Austria, 2023 Grandmamauntsistercat, Zuza Banasińska, Polen/Netherlands, 2024 I look into the mirror and repeat to myself, Giselle Lin, Singapur, 2023 I think of silences when I think of you, Jonelle Twum, Sweden, 2023 In Praise of Slowness, Hicham Gardaf, United Kingdom/Italy, 2023 Kinderfilm, Total Refusal, Austria, 2023 krahët e punëtorëve (Workers' Wings), Ilir Hasanaj, Kosovo, 2024 Neo Nahda, May Ziadé, Lebanon/UK, 2023 (withdrawn) O Gün Bu Gündür, Uçuyorum (Ever Since, I Have Been Flying), Aylin Gökmen, Switzerland, 2023 (withdrawn) Preoperational Model, Philip Ullman, Netherlands, 2024 Qareen ki sargoshi (Whispers of a Qareen), Maaria Sayed, India, 2024 Radije bih bila kamen (I Would Rather Be a Stone), Ana Hušman, Croatia, 2024 Shrooms, Jorge Jácome, Portugal, 2023 Slimane, Carlos Pereira, Germany, 2023 Solo la Luna Comprenderá (The Moon Will Contain Us), Kim Torres, Costa Rica/USA, 2023 Sombras Nada Más (Nothing But Shadows), Kathy Mitrani, Columbia/USA, 2023 Songs of Love and Hate, Saurav Ghimire, Nepal/Belgium, 2024 Tako Tsubo, Fanny Sorgo & Eva Pedroza, Austria/Germany, 2024 The Interior Frontier, Justin Clifford Rhody, USA, 2023 The Porn Selector, Lou Fauroux, France, 2024 the river that never ends, JT Trinidad, Philippines, 2022 The Wool Aliens, Julia Parks, United Kingdom, 2023 Va Saraye Setamkaaran Bad Manzalgaahist (And How Miserable is the Home of Evil), Saleh Kashefi, Switzerland, 2023 What Else Grows On The Palm Of Your Hand?, Dhiaa Biya, Belgium/ Morocco, 2023 You can't get what you want but you can get me, Samira Elagoz & Z Walsh, Netherlands, 2023 Zarafet ve Şiddet Arasında (Between Delicate and Violent), Şirin Bahar Demirel, Netherlands/Turkiye, 2023 Харалтіда (Kharaltida), Vasyl Lyah, Ukraine, 2024 休息一下 (Break no.1 & Break no.2), Lei Lei, People’s Republic of China , 2024 บัวบ้า (Crazy Lotus), Naween Noppakun, Thailand, 2024 مست دل (Mast-del), Maryam Tafakory, United Kingdom/Iran, 2023 피크닉 (PICNIC), Kawon Lee, South Korea, 2023
Blue, Woman, Dress, Jinhyun Kim, Germany/South Korea, 2023 Club Bunker, M + M, Germany, 2023 COMPASSION AND INCONVENIENCE, Vika Kirchenbauer, Germany, 2024 Curro, Yalda Afsah, Germany, 2024 Das feine Zirpen einer Dunkelziffer (Silent chirping of invisible Digits), Vera Sebert, Germany, 2023
Blue, Woman, Dress, Jinhyun Kim, Germany/South Korea, 2023 Club Bunker, M + M, Germany, 2023 COMPASSION AND INCONVENIENCE, Vika Kirchenbauer, Germany, 2024 Curro, Yalda Afsah, Germany, 2024 Das feine Zirpen einer Dunkelziffer (Silent chirping of invisible Digits), Vera Sebert, Germany, 2023
detours while speaking of monsters (detours while speaking of monsters), Deniz Şimşek, 2024 Eine einzelne Tat (A Single Incident), Constanze Wolpers, Germany, 2023 En el Mismísimo Momento (At that very moment), Federico Luis Tachella, Rita Pauls, Argentina/Germany, 2023 fühlst du dich angesprochen? (Does this apply to you?), Evelyn Deller & Selena Knoop, Germany, 2023 GAZE IN BATTLE, Ayla Pierrot Arendt, Germany, 2023 Gestern, Ich Denke An Morgen (Yesterday, Thinking About Tomorrow), Tom Otte, Germany, 2023 Gezielt Mittelalterliche Überlegungen (The Bear Within), Finn Ole Weigt & Paula Milena Weise, Germany, 2024 Ich hab dich tanzen sehn (I saw you were dancing), Sarah Pech, Austria/Germany, 2024 Ignore Your True Feelings at Your Own Peril, Miranda Siegel, Germany, 2024 Il compleanno di Enrico (The Birthday Party), Francesco Sossai, Germany, 2023 Pacific Vein, Ulu Braun, Germany, 2024 Pirouette, Ann Oren, Germany, 2024 Stille Nacht (Silent Night), Philipp Schaeffer, Jonathan Schaller, Germany, 2024 Stadtmuseum / Мой Рай (City Museum / My Paradise), Boris Dewjatkin, Germany, 2023 That's All From Me, Eva Könnemann, Germany, 2024 What fog?, Philip Widmann, Germany, 2024 X or Y or Z, Mirelle Borra, Germany, 2023
Filmstill: COMPASSION AND INCONVENIENCE, Vika Kirchenbauer
0.1 g, Raymond Hoepflinger, Switzerland, 2023 6 minutes/km, Catherine Boivin, Canada, 2023 Amongst the Roots & Veins, Nikolai Azariah, United Kingdom, 2024 bath salts, Murat Haschu, Germany, 2024 Das Salz des Lebens (Salt of Life), Sebastian Vetter, Germany, 2024
0.1 g, Raymond Hoepflinger, Switzerland, 2023 6 minutes/km, Catherine Boivin, Canada, 2023 Amongst the Roots & Veins, Nikolai Azariah, United Kingdom, 2024 bath salts, Murat Haschu, Germany, 2024 Das Salz des Lebens (Salt of Life), Sebastian Vetter, Germany, 2024
Das Salzsäckchen (The Salt Bag), Thomas Range, Germany, 2024 Entropy, Julia Münstermann, Germany, 2024 Grottenschlicht (Plain as a pit), Dorit Kiesewetter & Carsten Knoop, Germany, 2024 High Sierra, Michael Cedlind, Sweden, 2023 Knetmann Sad and Salty, Jule Carlotta Hermann, Germany 2024 Midnight Egg, Holga Rosen, Germany, 2024 Salt Eats Film, Dagie Brundert, USA, 2019 Salty Bliss, Mia Baden, Germany, 2024 Salz is’ genuch (Enough Salt), Holger Mohaupt, Germany, 2024 Salzmedley (Salt Medley), Stefan Möckel, Germany, 2024 Spätsommer 91 (Late Summer 91), Olaf Held, Germany, 2024 Suppenkasper (Soup lad), Kalle Anker, Germany, 2024 The Bonny Moorhen, Jonathan Farr, United Kingdom, 2023 The Male Gaze Recipe, Alma Weber & Joey Arand, Germany, 2024 Vier Ecken Salz (Four Corners of Salt), Lars Florian Walklang, Germany, 2024 Vom Sehen im Salz. Oder: Zehn Strategien, in einer Unendlichkeit der eigenen Endlichkeit ins Auge zu blicken (Of Seeing in Salt. Or: Ten strategies to face the own finitude in an infinity) Philipp Hartmann, Germany, 2024 Wacholder (Juniper), Andreas H. Drescher, Germany, 2024 Water Nation, Kim Spierenburg, Netherlands 2023
Our anniversary motto is "Cloudy". We focus on the nebulous, ever changing structures and various societal weather conditions. We look at ambiguities, taking in consideration the global political situation, and explore what impairs our view. With the help of filmic positions, we seek a way through these ambiguities and make visible what is hidden behind the cloud cover.
Addressing the effect of the war in Gaza on the national cultural scene share
Since its inception, we, the team of Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, have seen our festival as a space of artistic freedom and freedom of expression, of critical debate and encounters characterised by mutual respect.
We are publishing this statement as a reaction to a climate which is increasingly marked by division and pressure, particularly within the German cultural sector. This has led to a palpable restriction of agency for institutions and cultural workers. We strongly oppose politically motivated interference by third parties in programming decisions as well as demands for background checks on potential participants.
We take a clear stance against all forms of group-related misanthropy, such as ableism, ageism, anti-Muslim hatred, anti-Semitism*, discrimination of LGBTQIA+ individuals, classism, racism and sexism, as well as against all forms of physical and verbal violence. Creating and maintaining conditions that foster these principles requires ongoing, shared efforts and proactive, self-reflective behaviour from everyone involved in the festival. Texts such as the present one are no substitute for this essential work, though they do offer the opportunity to take a conscious position both internally and externally.
Our scene is diverse. Our actions as political beings can take on different forms, whether loud and explicit, or in the background and implicit. We respect the decision of all those who have opted to suspend their co-operation with German institutions in solidarity with the Palestinian people. We join the unconditional demand for a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of all hostages.
We want to preserve Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg as a place that reflects the diversity of artistic perspectives and attitudes, so that we can continue to share different experiences with one another.
This text was formulated on the basis of the Code of Ethics of the European Media Art Festival (EMAF). We endorse the words of our colleagues and would like to thank them for laying this groundwork.
