57th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen

Each year the world’s longest standing international short film competition receives around 4,500 entries from about 90 countries — short films as well as videos, which have been admitted to the competition on an equal footing with films since 1993. Since 2009 all entries to the competition must be German premieres. This year the entries came from 96 different countries. 60 films from 36 countries were selected for the international competition.

Just as important as the competition at the Short Film Festival is the extensive theme. This year the festival presented “Shooting Animals — A BriefHistory of Short Animal Film”, curated by the filmmaker Marcel Schwerin and the biologist and philosopher Cord Riechelmann.

Another highlight of the program is “William E. Jones Presents….”. Not a straightforward retrospective, but a juxtaposition of various elements in the work of the Los Angeles artist and filmmaker. He produced in the last 20 years a lot of films across the genres of documentary, avant-garde film, and porn. Also a little retrospective is dedicated to “perhaps the most Polish of all Polish filmmakers”, Grzegorz Królikiewicz, who works since his debut film in 1969 also for theatre and he writes books.

The festival program was completed by the German competition, the Children’s and Youth Cinema, the NRW- Competition (Works from filmmakers coming from the region) and the National MuVi (Music-Video)-Award (included a international MuVi-Program).

International Short Film Festival Oberhausen: www.kurzfilmtage.de