Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival
31.01—08.02.2025
The lines are long. Once you enter the Maison de la Culture on the Boulevard François Mitterand, you can already feel the buzz of an eclectic mix of festival-goers, filmmakers, and industry guests. If you’re looking to put up your posters somewhere, you’d better be fast, as the many available spots will quickly fill up, promoting the over 400 short films screening at the festival. On the many levels of this somewhat complex building structure with its myriad of staircases, you will surely find tired festival goers slumping in bean bags on the floor. This comes as no surprise, for the festival is one of the biggest—if not the biggest—short film event of the year, and anyone attending will have their work cut out.
But back to the aforementioned long lines. Clermont-Ferrand might not just be the biggest short film event of the year but also the one with the longest lines. Nowhere else will audiences queue up to watch short films like they do in Clermont. La Salle Jean-Cocteau is the festival’s biggest theatre hall, with a total of 1,377 seats. Yes, you read that correctly. And these seats are usually all taken, even though screenings start as early as 09:30. The audience is loyal and invested: we are in France, after all. If you take a closer look at the lines of people eagerly awaiting to enter the cinema, you will find all kinds: from young students about to experience their first short film screening to retired people who have come to the festival for all of their lives, or maybe even since the birth of the festival.
Originally called Short Film Week and held by the Clermont-Ferrand University Film Society for the first time in 1979, the festival inaugurated its first competitive section a few years later, in 1982. In 1986, it added the first Short Film Market to its activities, which has since become one of the first big industry events of the year. Held in a gym—yes, an actual gym—just across the road from La Maison de la Culture, the market is the place to be for the short film industry. Representatives from around the world present films at their country booths, lure the market guests with happy hours or engage in talks on joint activities. The market is the perfect spot to network and meet people from all over the world because from Colombia to Taiwan, from South Africa to Iceland—everyone is here in this repurposed sports hall.
If you need to get away from the festival buzz for a bit to re-energize, you might want to take a walk through the old town centre or a ride on one of the city trams before you re-join your peers at the l’Univers, one of the festival’s meeting spots for the night. But beware, you might lose sense of time there and eventually find yourself slumped in one of those bean bags the following day.
Text by Anne Gaschütz
Reading List
Noel Keserwany on Golden Bear Winner Les Chenilles
Nikola Ilić on Exit Through the Cuckoo’s Nest
Mast-del by Maryam Tafakory
looking she said I forget by Naomi Pacifique
Reading List
Basil Da Cunha on 2720
Long Time No See by Kevin Biele
The Miracle by Nienke Deutz
27 by Flóra Anna Buda
Cul-de-Sac by Mário Macedo, Vanja Vascarac
A Kind of Testament by Stephen Vuillemin
All Inclusive by Corina Schwingruber Ilić
Love, Dad by Diana Cam Van Nguyen
Sisters by Katarina Rešek Kukla
All Gucci My Broski by Harry Plowden
La Perra by Carla Melo Gampert
Reading List
backflip by Nikita Diakur
Will My Parents Come to See Me by Mo Harawe
Airhostess-737 by Thanasis Neofotistos
On The Japanese Artist’s Singular Work
Cherries by Vytautas Katkus
Richard Misek on A History of the World According to Getty Images
Neighbour Abdi by Douwe Dijkstra
The Devil by Jan Bujnowski
Mulika by Maisha Maene
An Avocado Pit by Ary Zara
The Sower of Stars by Lois Patiño
Will You Look At Me by Shuli Huang
Skinned by Joachim Hérissé
Nothing Holier Than a Dolphin by Isabella Margara
Reading List
Steakhouse by Špela Čadež
Deconstructing Realism In The Modern Day
Neon Phantom by Leonardo Martinelli
Noir-Soleil by Marie Larrivé
Late Blooming In A Lonely Summer Day by Sein Lyan Tun
O Que Resta by Daniel Soares
Love, Dad by Diana Cam Van Nguyen
Lemongrass Girl by Pom Bunsermvicha
Sierra by Sander Joon
Meet Doug by Théo Jollet
