Uppsala Short Film Festival
20—26.10.2025
The first snow of the year. The cinema of Ingmar Bergman’s childhood. Long conversations about films in the festival bar. And rather expensive beer (as everywhere in Sweden), which probably only guests coming from Switzerland and Norway order without a moment’s hesitation. These are some of the first associations that come to mind when thinking about the international short film festival in Uppsala, a small and somewhat sleepy university town not far from Stockholm.
And indeed, Uppsala is a special case in the European short film festival landscape. Because rarely is there a festival where you pretty much know in advance what you’re going to get – and where what you get is almost always pretty great. The venues, it feels like, have been the same for ages; the hangout spots are within walking distance; and the film selection is mostly exquisite (with some extravagant outliers thrown in for good measure).
On the one hand, this may be due to the fact that the festival already has 40 years under its belt and thus simply brings with it a wealth of experience (including the enviable early step of securing the domain shortfilmfestival.com for the festival). On the other hand, this mixture of routine and familiarity is certainly also a result of the well-coordinated team around Niklas Due Gillberg, Christoffer Ode, and Sigrid Hadenius-Ebner, who, year after year, caringly put together a diverse and challenging film and seminar program—the details of which are then, of course, discussed with relish at the bar.
Text by Daniel Hadenius-Ebner
Reading List

Man Number 4 by Miranda Pennell

A Conversation with Gaza Film Unit’s Eslam Saqqa and Ayman Alazraq

Elahe Esmaili on A Move

City of Poets by Sara Rajaei

The One Who Knows by Eglė Davidavičė

The Oasis I Deserve by Inès Sieulle

Noir-Soleil by Marie Larrivé

Steakhouse by Špela Čadež

Flores del otro Patio by Jorge Cadena

Daydreaming So Vividly About Our Spanish Holidays by Christian Avilés

Hardly Working by Total Refusal

27 by Flóra Anna Buda
Reading List

The Un-chaotic Cabinet That Wishes For Me To Sleep by Cilian Laurence Green

On the Works of Antoinette Zwirchmayr

Remember How I Used to Ride a White Horse by Ivana Bošnjak Volda, Thomas Johnson Volda

Skinned by Joachim Hérissé

The Miracle by Nienke Deutz
Reading List
Reading List

Love, Dad by Diana Cam Van Nguyen

Deconstructing Realism In The Modern Day

Neon Phantom by Leonardo Martinelli

Noir-Soleil by Marie Larrivé

Tracing Utopia by Catarina de Sousa, Nick Tyson
Reading List
Reading List

All on a Mardi Gras Day by Michal Pietrzyk

Apfelmus by Alexander Gratzer

Past Perfect by Jorge Jácome

Something To Remember by Niki Lindroth von Bahr

Symbiosis by Nadja Andrasev

Eyes on the Road by Stefanie Kolk