With 23 hand-picked films, the German Competition presents a red-hot selection of current national short film. 🔥 More urgent than ever, five programs show very personal views on major universal and social issues - from human and inhuman behaviour, remembering and forgetting to road trips through time and space.

A RECONNAISSANCE, Stefan Kruse, Germany/Denmark, 2025
A Thousand Waves Away, Helena Wittmann, Germany, 2025
A War I've Never Seen, Fariba Buchheim, Germany, 2023
The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for Mabel Dove, Nnenna Onuoha, Ghana/Germany, 2024
Augen auf, Augen zu. (EYES WIDE, EYES SHUT), Leonie Minor, Germany, 2024
Butterfly Kiss, Zohar Dvir, Germany, 2024
Ciao Ciao Guo, Ying Chen, Republic of China (Taiwan)/Germany, 2024
Cómo ser Pehuén Pedre (How to be Pehuén Pedre), Federico Luis, Argentina/Germany, 2024
Die ganze Nacht (The Whole Night), Alejo Franzetti, Germany/Argentina/Burkina Faso, 2025
Die Stimme des Ingenieurs (The Engineer's Voice), André Siegers, Germany, 2024
Eigentlich wollte ich nicht lange bleiben (Actually, I didn't want to stay long), Andreas Grützner, Germany, 2025
Gelin, Ah Gelin, Can Ünlü, Germany, 2025
Hühnergarderobe (Chicken Wardrobe), Simon Dickel, Germany, 2025
Ich hätte lieber einen anderen Film gemacht (I would have liked to make a different film), Suse Itzel, Germany, 2024
Invisible Countdown, Amir Ovadia Steklov, Germany, 2024
Mother's Letter, Sylvia Schedelbauer, Germany, 2025
One Hundred Years Later, Christoph Girardet, Germany, 2025
PREKID VATRE (CEASEFIRE), Jakob Krese, Germany/Italy/Slowenia, 2025
Les Rites de Passage (Les Rites de Passage), Florian G.M. Fischer & Johannes Krell, Germany, 2024
rückblickend betrachtet (in retrospect), Daniel Asadi Faezi & Mila Zhlutenko, Germany, 2025
The Garden Had Not Disappeared, Helena Aljona Kyn, Germany, 2025
The Wolf, Naama Heiman, Germany, 2024
Whether Here or There, Amir Naumann, Germany, 2024

Film selection by Francesca Bertin, Lars Frehse, Leonie Kellein, David Kleingers & Nadine Mayer.

Filmstill: The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for Mabel Dove, Nnenna Onuoha

The selection committee has chosen – and we love to share! As of now, all films in International Competition 2025 are out and ready to be explored! ❤️‍🔥

A Metamorphosis, Lin Htet Aung, Myanmar, 2025
A Night That Took Everything, Nida Mehboob, Pakistan/Finland, 2025
Archipelago of Earthen Bones — To Bunya, Malena Szlam, Canada, 2024
Being John Smith, John Smith, United Kingdom, 2024
Coeur Bleu (Blue Heart), Samuel Suffren, Haiti/France, 2025
Casi Septiembre (Close to September), Lucía G. Romero, Spain, 2025
Ne réveillez pas l'enfant qui dort (Don't Wake the Sleeping Child), Kevin Aubert, Senegal/France/Morocco, 2025
Durian, Durian, Nelson Yeo, Singapore, 2024
Echoes of Machtat, Maram Nairi, Tunisia, 2024
Vybukhy bilia muzeiu (Explosions Near the Museum), Roman Khimei & Yarema Malashchuk, Ukraine, 2023
Deus-E-Meio (God-And-A-Half), Margarida Assis, Portugal, 2024
Happy New Year, Huang Weipeng, People’s Republic of China, 2024
HIC SVNT DRACONES, Justin Fayard, France, 2024
Hold Me Close, Aurora Brachman & LaTajh Weaver, USA, 2024
Comment ça va? (How Are You?), Caroline Poggi & Jonathan Vinel, France, 2025
How Many Lovers Can You Fit Inside a House?, Maya Sfakianaki, Spain, 2024
Mother's Child, Naomi Noir, Netherlands, 2024
Mua besoj më shpëtoj portreti (I Believe the Portrait Saved Me), Alban Muja, Kosovo/Netherlands, 2024
Landscapes of Longing, Alisha Tejpal, Mireya Martinez & Anoushka Mirchandani, India/USA, 2024
Language Decay, Zazie Ray-Trapido, USA, 2025
looking she said I forget, Naomi Pacifique, Netherlands/Switzerland, 2024
Man number 4, Miranda Pennell, United Kingdom, 2024
Miraculous Accident, Assaf Gruber, Austria/Germany/Poland, 2025
O Jardim Em Movimento (The Moving Garden), Inês Lima, Portugal, 2024
Notes From Planet Three, Simon Ellis, United Kingdom, 2025
Okay Keskidee! Let Me See Inside, Rhea Storr, United Kingdom, 2025
Al Basateen (The Orchards), Antoine Chapon, France, 2025
Puro Andar (Language of the Entrails), Luciana Decker Orozco, Bolivia, 2025
Prelude, Alina Panasenko, Ukraine, 2024
Rain Falls Still, Đăng Tùng Bạch, Australia/Vietnam, 2024
SILENCE OF HOMA, Azin Feizabadi, Iran/Germany, 2025
Boi Thaka (The Flow of Resilience), Pranami Koch, India, 2024
The Garden Of Electric Delights, Billy Roisz, Austria, 2025
The Tobacconist, Keifer Nyron Taylor, United Kingdom, 2024
Water Sports, Whammy Alcazaren, Philippines, 2024
What goes up, Samar Al Summary, Saudi Arabia, 2024

Film selection by Anna Feistel, Alejo Franzetti, Theresa George, Ghasideh Golmanaki, Maike Mia Höhne, Sebastian Markt, Moritz Maul, Nora Molitor, Felix Piatkowski, Yulia Serdyukova & Sarnt Utamachote.

Filmstill: Casi Septiembre, Lucía G. Romero

Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg is Germany's film festival with the fairest working conditions! During the Berlinale, the team was honored with the Fair Festival Award. The prize was awarded for the third time by the AG Festivalarbeit in ver.di at the short film reception of the AG Kurzfilm.

The award is based on an anonymous survey conducted by ver.di among all permanent and freelance employees of German film festivals. In a two-stage process, the fairness of working conditions was surveyed in categories such as working atmosphere, equality, payment and participation. For the year 2024, Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg received the highest rating from the team and is therefore considered the fairest film festival in Germany.

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!

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