Film Festivals And Their New Realities
Six Essays on the Transformation of (Short) Film Culture in Europe
What happens when the ground beneath our film festivals begins to shift? These are the questions that animated “Film Festivals & Their New Realities”, a six-part panel series hosted by the European Short Film Network (ESFN). This reader gathers six essays commissioned by Talking Shorts, written in response to these panels.
The Age of Uncertainty
Film festivals have always been more than just places to watch films. They are laboratories of the possible, where art, politics, and society collide—sometimes in celebration, sometimes in conflict. But what happens when the ground beneath them begins to shift? When cinemas vanish from cityscapes, when algorithms dictate attention spans, when the very idea of a “public” fractures into polarised echo chambers? And what does it mean to curate, to gather, to resist when the old rules no longer apply?
These are the questions that animated “Film Festivals & Their New Realities”, a six-part panel series hosted by the European Short Film Network (ESFN) across festivals in Nijmegen (NL), Oberhausen (DE), Lisbon (PT), Vienna (AT), Zagreb (HR), and Uppsala (SE). Each event zoomed in on a different fault line: the ethics of AI in animation, the responsibility of institutions in repressive times, the urgent need to redefine impact beyond box-office logic. The conversations were sometimes uncomfortable, but always necessary—because festivals, like the films they champion, are not neutral. They are shaped by the same forces they seek to interrogate.
This reader gathers six essays commissioned by Talking Shorts, written in response to these panels. They are not transcripts, but provocations—critical reflections that embrace contradiction, skepticism, and even frustration. Because the festival landscape today is less about easy answers and more about asking the right questions: How do we programme courageously when censorship looms? What does community mean when the cinema down the street is now a luxury apartment? And why do we still measure success in numbers, when the most transformative moments—debates, chance encounters, quiet revelations—happen off the spreadsheet?
The texts you’ll find here resist the safety of consensus. They were written by observers who were free to challenge the festivals that hosted them, the formats that framed the debates, and even the premises of the discussions themselves. If festivals are to remain relevant, resilient, and radical, they must welcome dissent, not just the applause. So consider this reader an invitation to argue. To steal ideas. To disagree. And if you leave with more questions than answers? Good. That’s where the next panel should begin. Let’s keep the debate alive.
Daniel Hadenius-Ebner
for the European Short Film Network
This reader is produced by the European Short Film Network and THIS IS SHORT, in cooperation with and edited by Talking Shorts, and co-funded by the Creative Europe MEDIA programme of the European Union.
