Mission

VIENNA SHORTS is an international short film festival. The festival has taken place at several venues at the end of May/ beginning of June every year since 2004, and also online since 2020. It has drawn more than 10,000 visitors and about 500 accredited trade visitors.

Every year, VIENNA SHORTS shows between 250 and 350 short films from around the world in four competitions and curated programs. It is a qualifying festival for the Austrian Film Award, the British Academy Film Awards, the European Film Awards, and the Academy Awards©.

For us, cinema is a space of visual possibilities, discoveries, and expeditions. It leads beyond one’s own perspective into unknown cinematic territories, into the vastness of filmic modes of expression. In doing so, we present films that at times elude, resist, or challenge established viewing habits—films with a clear stance, a distinctive voice, and the courage to be unconventional.

We see cinema as a space for discourse and exchange. It is a place for engaging with the present—on social, political, and, not least, cinematic levels. We seek to ask how our society is organized, and how cinema reflects and helps shape it.

Within the festival, a space emerges for community, solidarity, and cohesion. We want to create access, bring people along, and expand the field—with respect and joy, with curiosity and creativity. The path into the future is not predetermined, but winding and full of detours. We want to shape it together, in life as in cinema.

Max Bergmann & Karin Ginzel
Festival Directors