It has grown loud. Opinions collide, debates accelerate, and often it seems less about understanding than about being right. As crises overlap and spaces for dialogue shrink, listening becomes almost a radical practice. This is where the 42nd Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg begins: under the theme “Listening”, we invite you to pay attention to voices too often overheard. To stories more complex than headlines. And above all: to one another.

More than 300 films open up space for this, engaging with the urgent questions of our time. In the cinema, at the Festival Centre Post, in post-screening discussions, at panels, in an exhibition by artist David OReilly, on the dance floor, and everywhere in between. Because listening is not a passive state, but a resistant practice – one we want to explore together with you.

The full festival program for 2026 will be available here from mid-May.

Competitions

“And the award goes to …” We’ll find out after nearly a week at the awards ceremony on the festival Saturday. The films in the competition programmes act as seismographs of our world’s feverish state. Moving between the political and the personal, the experimental and the documentary, their forms are as diverse as the artists behind them. More than 6,500 films were submitted for this year’s edition!

Each programme is a journey in its own right, reflecting the formal range of the short form: fiction and documentary films, 2D and 3D animation, essay and experimental works, as well as hybrid formats. In total, we award €18,500 in prize money. Alongside the Kodak Film Award, the ARTE Short Film Award, and the Audience Award, this year also introduces the Award of the German Film Critics Association.

Filmmakers will be present at all screenings and look forward to engaging with audiences. Join us and experience a cinema that resonates beyond the screen!

Curated programs

In the Laboratory of the Present, a range of carefully curated film programs provides the starting point for engaging with contemporary social issues. This year, we focus on diverse feminist perspectives, the political dimensions of waiting, and a polyphonic selection of short films from and about Hamburg from the NDR archive.

The Archive of the Present turns its attention, on the one hand, to Latin America, and on the other, to the legacy of queer people who died of AIDS.

In the accompanying discussion format Forum, these topics are explored in greater depth through conversations with curators, filmmakers, and guests from a variety of contexts. Voices brings together cinematic perspectives from Iran and Kosovo, while Wildcard presents, among other works, a milestone of Cuban feminist cinema.

Exhibitions

In our exhibition space Open Space, we present the installation EACHOTHER 互 (Work in Progress) by Irish artist David OReilly. It is being shown publicly for the first time.

A second exhibition engages with the visual worlds of one of the most extensively documented wars of our time – the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Curated by photographer Daniel Pilar from Hannover and producer and photographer Yulia Serdyukova from Kiev.

More Happenings

All of this is accompanied by numerous additional events in and around the Festival Centre Post: industry events for professional guests and emerging talent, short film walks, parties, in-depth talks, engaging workshops, and so much more.

The full festival program for 2026 will be available here from mid-May.