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©.

We regard life and cinema (in all its manifestations) as inextricably linked—as a result of time, experience and attitude, always to be questioned and celebrated, and aware of the past, the present and the future, not to be forgotten and shaped.

This inherently political and aesthetic view understands cinematic art as an empathetic and utopian mirror of society and the world as an adventurous and sometimes chaotic place that we want to shape with self-confidence—the festival positions itself accordingly idiosyncratic and not oriented to mass taste.

Life and its images are constantly changing: film production is more extensive, film viewing is more diverse, the world has become faster and more diverse. It is precisely such developments that a festival must take up—not in order to pant after possible trends, but to take a pronounced stance.

In our eyes, a festival must be attentive and curious, distinguished and incorruptible in its selection, disputatious and resistant in its positions, without letting provocation or intervention degenerate into a simple end in itself.

The organization of a festival requires dedication. Continuous, consistent, constant. And it demands trust. On the part of the people involved, the audience and the filmmakers. But first and foremost, trust in the inextricability of life and cinema.

Daniel Hadenius-Ebner
Festival Director