Short Film Breaks

*Please read our Rules & Terms! All films must have hard-coded English subtitles.

Festival Description

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.

For our 9th edition we are waiting for your films, who will compete in the following categories:

- Best International Short Film:
We're accepting short films, of any genre, under 30 minutes, from all around the world, except Romania.

- Best Romanian Short Film offered by Fortuna:
We're accepting short films of any genre, under 30 minutes, produced in Romania or all around the world but having Romanian as the single (or main) dialogue language.

- Best Feature Film
We're accepting feature films, of any genre and length, from all around the world.

- Best Animation Film:
We're accepting animation films, under 20 minutes, from all around the world.

- Best Documentary Film:
We're accepting documentary films, under 20 minutes, from all around the world.

- Best Experimental Film:
We're accepting experimental films, under 20 minutes, from all around the world.

- Best Music Video:
We're accepting music videos, under 20 minutes, from all around the world.

- Best No Dialogue Film:
We're accepting short films of any genre, under 30 minutes, with no dialogue or spoken words, from all around the world.

- Best Human Rights Short Film
We're accepting short films of any genre, under 20 minutes, created all around the world, with a theme or story related to human rights, environment & ecology, activism, citizenship and community mobilization, local development, the rights of minorities, migration, global justice, etc.

- Best Mental Health Short Film
We're accepting shorts of any genre, under 20 minutes, created all around the world, with a theme or story related to mental health.

- Best Future Cities&Villages Short Film
We're accepting shorts of any genre, under 20 minutes, with themes that are focusing on the future of cities and villages: sustainable, smart and resilient. Places for people that will improve their quality of life. Topics covered: ecology, regeneration, technology, innovation, urban mobility, architecture, etc.

- Best 1 Minute Film
We're accepting short films of any genre, having the length of under or exactly 1 minute.

We're looking forward to watching your films!
Every year we discover new gems we fall in love with!

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Festival Mission

Created by filmmakers and human resources people, Short Film Breaks had its mission statement, from the start, to create a bridge between hard to distribute films (especially independent short films) and hard to reach audiences (employees and beneficiaries from our partner companies and NGOs and people living in remote villages around the world).
During our first nine years we’ve managed to screen over 600 films to audiences totaling around 50000 people, from 7 countries.

Festival History

We started in 2013, with screenings over a three months period for the 1000 Ipsos employees in Bucharest and Brasov. Our first edition also had special events and Q&A with guests from the Romanian filmmaking industry like Tudor Giurgiu, Adrian Sitaru or Tom Wilson, among others.

On our second edition we partnered with NexT IFF (www.nextfilmfestival.ro), the most important short film festival in Romania. Again, we had weekly screenings for three months and special events with guest like Florin Piersic Jr., Vivi Dragan Vasile, Ioana Flora, Dana Bunescu and Gabi Suciu.

During our third edition we continued our partnership with NexT IFF and added a new one with Alter-Native (www.madisz.ro), the most important Hungarian language film festival in Romania. That meant that again, for three months in a row, our employees watched short films during their breaks.

In 2016, we moved to the next level and added a competitive component to the festival, besides our non-competitive partnerships with Next IFF and Alter-Native, while starting a new collaboration, with Onion Films from Katmandú (http://onionfilms.com.np).
From the 1985 films submitted, we selected 7 for the Best Romanian Short Film category and 26 films for the Best International Short Film category.
We've also organized the first public event, a White Night at J'ai Bistrot Bucharest (https://bit.ly/2LaRPNS), which continued in 2017 with a second edition (https://bit.ly/2NbPend) and will continue in 2020 with the third.

2017 was the year when we first organized our amazing Kathmandu Short Film Breaks event and along with our screenings from Ipsos, we started our partnerships with Zitec and UBIS Club, both in Bucharest and Iasi (https://bit.ly/2uhWU0b).
We also opened our doors to a new range of films and filmmakers. From the total number of 2403 films received across all platforms, we accepted 118 films.
What's more, we added an online festival, i-Say Short Film Breaks, to our live screenings! The first edition was won by THE STORY OF 90 COINS, while the 2018 edition was won by TIME 2 SPLIT (http://i-say.co/iSaySFBplaylist).

2018 was a big year for us. We almost doubled the number of received submissions, to 3851, and we've increased our prizes FIVE TIMES, to $1500, while DXC Technology, Casa Pariurilor and eFortuna also joined our list of partners where we're holding weekly screenings during our festival!

In 2019 we DOUBLED the prizes, reaching a RECORD total prizes of $3000. That's ten times more than the prizes we started with, back in 2016!
And after a few years of testing, screening films in 19 communities from 7 countries (Nepal, Indonesia, Kenya, Tanzania, Romania, Senegal and Guatemala) in 2019 we launched our Patreon page (https://www.patreon.com/shortfilmbreaks) with the aim to create recurrent cinema experiences in 50 communities from 17 countries.
We’ve also organized 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 (http://bit.ly/estuar2019).

And the cherry on top, for the first time in history, we organized a film screening at 5,364 meters, in the Everest Base Camp, in October (http://bit.ly/SFBatEverestBaseCamp2019)! Most probably, the highest films were ever screened!