Kino London Short Film Festival

We connect short filmmakers with audiences who crave something outside the mainstream. From first time filmmakers to Oscar winners, we support indie and emerging talent at every stage of their journey.

At the 2025 edition of our festival we showcased over 100 brilliant shorts August 22-25 exclusively at The Garden Cinema in Holborn.

Highlights included “THE PEARL COMB” by Ali Cook which went on to be Oscar & BAFTA Shortlisted , “FUCK-A-FAN“ by Muriel d’Ansembourg which went on to win a Golden Calf at Nederlands Film Festival, and “THE LAST DANCE“ by Hayden McLean which went on to be nominated for Best UK Short at Raindance.

WHAT MAKES OUR FESTIVAL DIFFERENT?

1. AUTHENTIC INCLUSIVELY

Too many festivals try to reverse-engineer diversity and end up being “tick-boxy”. We know filmmakers are smart enough to see through that. Instead, we know true diversity comes from having a diverse programming team & jury who, as filmmakers themselves, understand that beautifully polished, well-crafted shorts are often made by talented working class emerging artists.

We pride ourselves on balancing our diversity standards with being talent focused. Our programming team is made up of eclectic, international taste-makers, and we want to program films that will have a wide appeal vs a pretentious niche.

To hold ourselves accountant to delivering a diverse program, we base our submission categories based on the budget of your film. If you’ve made a film on an iPhone with mates in your backyard then you won’t be competing with someone who has a rich uncle or got BFI funding - we separate those categories.

2. TRANSPARENCY

If you choose to submit to our festival you won’t be screaming into a silent void. Upon request, every filmmaker can receive feedback from our programmers, regardless if their film is selected or not. This data not only proves that we’ve watched and thoughtfully considered your film, but it also gives you insight into how competitive your film is/isn’t in the wider festival circuit.

3. WE BUILD INTO YOUR FUTURE

Every filmmaker whose work is Officially Selected into our festival is eligible to receive 40% off for our Kino London Short Film Fund which grants up to £5000 in funding for your next project + access to equipment & mentorship.

Once your film is done with the festival circuit, we offer short film distribution, either via our our own Weekly Pick OR by introducing you to one of our partners. Via our own distribution channels we've bought over 30,000 views to a single film. Plus we’ve also helped short filmmakers find distribution on Omeleto, Klipist, and more.

OUR SELECTION PROCESS

All of our festival preselectors, programmers, and jury members are entirely comprised of award-winning filmmakers - you know, people qualified to judge films.

1. All submissions are watched in full by one of our preselectors.

2. Preselectors then recommend which films should advance to be viewed by our programers.

3. Our programers watch all films deemed worthy by our preselectors. (No programming decisions are made until all submissions are watched. This means that a filmmaker who applies to our late deadline has just as good a chance as a filmmaker who applies to our earlybird deadline.)

4. Then our programmers deliberate on which films should be included it the festival. (The amount of Official Selections vary from year to year based upon how many hours we have in our cinema venues - last year our program comprised of 20 hours. Tough decisions always need to be made. Films that we truly wish we could program, but can’t due to the lack of time in the cinema, are awarded Finalist & Semi-Finalist status depending on how far into deliberations they make it.)

5. Once our programers have made the final decision on Official Selections, they start to deliberate about which films should be nominated for awards.

6. The programming team decide the Award Nominees.

7. The Nominees are then watched by our Jury Members. (Jury members vote in whatever category(s) they are qualified to vote in. For example, if a jury member is a composer, they will vote for the Best Score Category and not the Best Screenplay category.)

8. Award Winners are decided based on popular vote from our Jury.

While Jury Members rotate annually, previous Jury Members have included Emmy Nominee Rolfe Kent (Dexter, Sideways, About Schmidt, Up in the Air, Mean Girls), Giles Alderson (Three Day Millionaire, The Dare, Arthur & Merlin & The Filmmaker’s Podcast), Mali Elfman (producer of birth/rebirth, and Karen Gillan’s The Party’s Just Beginning), Amit Shah (The Hundred Foot Journey, Last Christmas), cinematographer Vince Knight (Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey), screenwriter Neil Linpow (Little Bone Lodge), Clare Cooney (Departing Seniors), and more.

WEEKLY PICK

Finished with the festival circuit and looking to premiere your film online? We also distribute & help promote shorts online via our Weekly Pick, where we will…

1. Feature your film
2. Interview you about your filmmaking experience
3. Post about your film across our social media
4. Send your film directly to our email subscribers

History:

HISTORY OF OUR FESTIVAL

Although Kino London has been operating events since 2009 (most infamously know for our Short Film Open Mic and filmmaking Meet-Up events), our Kino London Short Film Festival first opened for submissions in 2019. The festival was founded under the name Kino London presents The People’s Film Festival, a name chosen for our democratic & open approach to film curation. The first edition of The People’s Film Festival took place over two days at the Whirled Cinema in London, March 2020.

Due to covid, the second edition of our festival, in April 2021, took place exclusively online.

In 2022, we returned to Whirled Cinema for our third edition to host live screenings once again + we continued to offer our program online. As a hybrid festival with both physical and digital screenings we were able to make our festival more inclusive for international filmmakers unable to travel, plus triple the reach to international audiences. Also in 2022, we decided to unify our brand with our other Kino offerings, renaming our festival the Kino London Short Film Festival. The same year our festival was recognised as a BIFA qualifier for their Best British Short Film Category.

For our 4th edition, we expanded the footprint of our hybrid festival to run over 8 days virtually, and 6 days in 3 different arthouse cinemas across London - the Garden Cinema, the Castle Cinema, and once again Whirled Cinema. We also introduced our Industry Night, which proved to be a high impact networking night for filmmakers to meet short film festival curators and distributors.

For our 5th edition, we expanded yet again to include an additional day in cinemas. 2024 would be the last year we offered a hybrid festival.

By our 6th edition, we had doubled in size in terms of the amount of films selected. This was also the first year that the Garden Cinema became our exclusive venue - happening over 4 days over the late August bank holiday. This event featured over 100 short films (including 2 Open Screen events) and 6 Industry Sessions on various topics from distribution, to shooting on film, to on screen intimacy, and more.