14th Short Film Breaks

📖 SHORT FILM BREAKS is the only film festival taking place within private companies, public and non-profit organizations, in a bid to offer smart break opportunities while promoting the independent movie industry around the world.

🏆 Awards and Prizes

Short Film Breaks is proud to offer cash prizes of 💲2️⃣0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ for our 14th edition, aiming to recognize and celebrate the best independent short films from around the world.

All winners will be announced in December, and we will be awarding the following prizes in every category:
🥇 Gold Elephant
🥈 Silver Elephant
🥉 Bronze Elephant

In addition, the winning films will be listed on IMDb (www.imdb.com/event/ev0004935), offering them valuable exposure to industry professionals and audiences worldwide.

We believe that independent short films are an essential part of the filmmaking landscape and deserve recognition for their creativity and innovation. Join us in celebrating the best and brightest talents in the industry at Short Film Breaks!

💪 Our Mission

At Short Film Breaks, our mission is to bridge the gap between hard-to-distribute films - especially independent shorts - and hard-to-reach audiences, including employees and beneficiaries of our partner companies and NGOs, as well as people living in remote villages around the world. As a festival founded by filmmakers and human resources professionals, we believe in the transformative power of cinema to inspire and connect people across cultures and borders.

Over the past 12 years, we've screened over 1000 films to audiences in seven countries, reaching a total of 108,000 people, and offered cash prizes of more than $30.000. Our goal is to continue expanding our reach and impact, bringing more diverse and innovative voices to audiences who might not otherwise have access to them. Thank you for joining us on this journey!

📜 History and Milestones

We started back in 2013 and we’ve kept ourselves busy, trying to improve with each hosted edition. During the years we’ve managed to:
✰ screen films in 19 communities from 7 countries (Nepal, Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania, Romania, Senegal and Guatemala)
✰ multiply the total value of cash prizes we’re awarding winning filmmakers, awarding more than $30.000 in all our editions
✰ organize screenings in Bucharest and Brașov, over a three months periods, for more than a thousand corporate employees of Ipsos
✰ create special events and Q&A sessions with guests from the Romanian filmmaking industry, such as Tudor Giurgiu, Florin Piersic JR, Adrian Sitaru, Vivi Dragan Vasile, Ioana Flora, Dana Bunescu, and Gabi Suciu or Tom Wilson
✰ partner with the biggest local short-movie festival, NexT IFF, in order to expand the audiences we were targeting and bring to them a larger number of films
✰ add multiple competitive sections to the festival
✰ organize public white night screenings in Bucharest, partnering with J’ai Bistrot
✰ partner with Alter-Native, the most important Hungarian language film festival in Romania, for adding a new layer to the type of offered content
✰ start a collaboration with Onion Films (Katmandú), which lead to setting up our first edition of Katmandú Short Film Breaks
✰ expand the list of companies that wanted to offer smart film breaks to their employees with Zitec (Bucharest and Brașov), Estuar Foundation (Bucharest), UBIS Club (Bucharest and Iași), DXC Technology, Casa Pariurilor and eFortuna
✰ offer an online component to our film festival, which proved very beneficial, especially during the pandemic period, involving the audience even more in the process
✰ increase our total number of received submissions (with a record of 3850 films in 2018)
✰ organize an event for the Romanian Mental Health community, in front of a full house, in partnership with the Estuar Foundation and Mental Health Europe, at ARCUB Bucharest
✰ host a film screening event at 2.544 meters, on the Moldoveanu Peak in Romania, and at 5.364 meters, in the Everest Base Camp
✰ partner with Eforie Colorat to bring our festival to the Black Sea community on Eforie Sud, both to residents and tourists visiting the coast
✰ set in place a national program through which local libraries from villages and small cities become cinemas for their audiences, through recurring screenings that take place in each venue, accompanied by debates and encounters with industry representatives

📖 We can't wait to discover new gems and fall in love with your films. Submit your films now and join us in celebrating the magic of cinema!