“The London Short Film Festival (LSFF) is a festival not afraid to take creative risks and nurture new talent, something rarely seen in this age of austerity and conformity.”

The BAFTA-qualifying, internationally regarded short-film festival takes place from the 14th to 23rd of January. From 5000+ open submissions, The London Short Film Festival presents 250 to 500 British and International short films from a multiplicity of filmmakers, visual artists and creatives across intersections and with a commitment to peripheral voices.

What’s On:

New Shorts

From over 5000 global submissions, comes a selection of short films made in the past year by filmmakers across the UK and across the world. This year brings a catalogue of over 23 collections of short films including:

Low-budget Mayhem:

“The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” Orson Welles knew what was up. And if you agree with such a statement, LSFF's cherished ragtag anthology of short and strange frugal filmmaking is for you.

WTF: Outside The Box + Q&A:

The LSFF’s brings their annual gift to audiences of the wonderful imaginations with the WTF: Outside The Box catalogue. Be prepared watch shorts that will make you sit back open-mouthed and question your very sanity, or marvel at their twisted and strange minds.

Anthropocene’s Deities:

These films explore spiritual practices and self-reflection through acknowledging other beings, they’re an invitation to contemplate the richness and fragility of ecosystems. What can we learn from humanity’s celebration and destruction of nature and animals?

The UK Competition

This competition is for Best UK Short Film and features four genre-specific collections:

So It Goes:

From the profound significance of a life lost, to snapshots of the banal and the absurd - This collection of shorts explores our collective existence as a mere evolutionary speck in the grand scheme of things and ponders on our place in the universe in heartfelt, distinctive ways.

Colouring Outside The Lines:

Focus your gaze towards the periphery and find a kaleidoscope of perspectives. These films explore sexual liberation via custom video game characters, a neurodiverse artist’s psychedelic world, and a dreamlike meditation on Iranian cinema.

You’re Obviously In The Wrong:

Ever feel like an outsider? Returning to a homeland, we no longer recognise brief periods of just-passing-through or subverting the structural discrimination of the Hollywood studio system; this programme takes us all over the world and explores universal themes of trauma, transience and transformation.

Eye Of The Duck:

A surreal journey into the realm of the uncanny, this programme veers into horror, from screaming calves and eerie premonitions to nightmarish mirrors and monstrous puddings.

The International Competition

The International competition has been selected from over 5000 international entries and features four genre-specific collections:

We seize only a bit of the curtain that hides the infinite from us:

The haunting past reassembles itself, sometimes with permission, at times without. These films focus on a former student, a father, a young woman and a young man wrangled with a history that intends to reveal and expose lingering dilemmas.

I hear you, I see you, I speak of you:

A meaning is decipherable. Yet a meaning of purpose is indecipherable. This collection of shorts is wrapped in yearning and adversity - siblings resort to rivalry, a family is obliged to seek refuge, a newlywed wobbles in predicament while a community forms bonds with one another.

On the Pulse of Hope:

It was long till Spring, yet the frozen water was still flowing. Death laced in solitary, children seeking meaning, a couple drowning in lust and a neighbourhood in drought from routine. In truth, nobody wants water this thin.

And what remains is the maze:

They had no words but to conceive their longing silently. Tethered by reality of others, men searching for passing love, a teenager fails to recognise herself, a mother to be is in despair at her community and a child's mind runs wild in quarantine. Today may look like tomorrow, but it's not the same.

Short Documentaries

This years edition of short documentaries speak to the contemporary global condition via a multitude of voices. These genres collections include:

Presumed Guilty, Awaiting Innocence:

For those who have spent years imprisoned, have had a loved one die at the hands of the police, or live threatened by their presence, the purpose and success of the police force and prisons is highly questionable. Looking across our meagre carceral systems, this programme explores unjust incarceration and abuses of power.

Hostile Environments:

Building context from testimony, these films take on an expanded notion of a hostile environment, from conditions of migrant detainment in Ireland to the picture postcard of Myanmar amidst a genocide, and the challenges of travelling in and out of occupied Palestine.

Kinship:

Focusing both on direct and mediated interactions between families and friends, these filmmakers turn to documentary to explore a spectrum of relationships.

Using the tools of the form to facilitate uncomfortable conversations, return to personal archives or simply act as a record of a moment in time.

The Promise of Happiness?:

Emerging from a programme presenting films of collective joy, lost futures, and repaired pasts, these films reveal that the instability of happiness. A deliberately intergenerational selection, taking us from queer clubs to bingo halls, by way of psychic readings and the ecstatic outcomes of divorce.

Special Events

This year's Special Events programme is programmed and presented by T A P E Collective, working with a range of programming collectives and community groups from across London to produce a range of shorts mostly centred around 27 specific groups and topics. These topics include:

T A P E Collective Presents Social Media Killed The Landline Star

These shorts incorporate our everyday use of social media into the fabric of their stories. Via alternative-source scripts and innovative new waves of filmmaking, the filmmakers challenge traditional forms of storytelling by blurring the line between content creation, filmmaking, pop culture and moving image.

T A P E Collective Presents Bonded

This collection features films made by mothers who are also moving image artists and filmmakers. These shorts focus on the themes of motherhood, pregnancy, birth, fertility, mental health and breastfeeding.

DWOSKINO

The world premiere of three newly commissioned artists' films inspired by the life and work of boundary-pushing experimental filmmaker Stephen Dwoskin. These new works take creative inspiration from his work and the themes he explored throughout his life of masculinity, sexuality, disability, illness, pain/pleasure, voyeurism, movement and desire.

Industry

Last but not least, is the Industry programme. (17th - 21st) The LSFF Industry Programme, curated by T A P E Collective, offers invaluable insight for budding filmmakers, established industry professionals and everyone interested in the changing the landscape of production, distribution and commissioning. Hear from the directors of TV hit ‘Sex Education’ and leading POC executives, and join them for their daily Happy Hour drinks and networking at Rich Mix.

Which collection are you looking forward to the most?

Make sure to visit the London Short Film Festival Website to get your tickets!

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What’s On:

New Shorts

The UK Competition

The International Competition

Short Documentaries

Special Events

Industry

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What Is The South London Club?

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