The U.F.O. Short Film Festival takes place in August every year in the city of Leipzig, Germany. "U.F.O." stands for "Unknown Film Objects", short films that have never been screened in Leipzig before and have never been awarded until transmittal.

It was first established in 2008 as an annual film festival before having a brief hiatus after its 12th edition. The festival is back and better now for its 14th edition. Apart from professional film makers, we want to encourage independent film makers as well. Beside the competition our short film festival is a platform for knowledge exchange and we offer also workshops of different filmmaking-themes as well.

In 2018 we celebrated 10 years of U.F.O.! This was a great festival-evening and for the first time a jury of experts for junior filmmakers voted besides the audience the best of the shown short films.

We kindly invite you to submit your short film of any genre be it Experimental, Art, Documentary, Fiction, Live-action etc, as long as it never has been shown in Leipzig before, has a maximum length of 30 minutes and has never won a prize (until transmittal).

See you in Leipzig!

Awards & Prizes

The festival awards cash prizes, plaques and certificates for all films and runner-ups in each category.

Best fiction film
Best experimental film
Best animation film
Best documentary film
Best silent film
Jury Mention

There are also sponsors' awards which include
camera equipment
DOK - Leipzig Festival accreditation
screenwriting software

Rules & Terms

Max. length of shortfilm: 30 minutes
Max. age of shortfilm: 2 years
Submissions accepted from all over the world
Your short film should not have been shown in Leipzig until submission
Foreign language films must be subtitled in English
2 Reviews
Overall Rating
Quality
Value
Communication
Hospitality
Networking
  • Mattia Mura

    The event is very cool and the indipendent vibe is really strong, even though it is hard to fully enjoy the show if you are not a German speaker. Hospitality has been wonderful in any aspect and even tough they have some issues related to organization, (the festival doesn't split movies in categories, there's no jury, things look a bit confused...) it is a nice event that you could enjoy if you don't have big expectation.

    April 2020
    Helpful
  • Lisa Zielke

    Beautiful location, great variety of chosen films, large audience, only a bit of a pity and "waste" that the film makers weren't really used for anything, I mean - there is so much potential and there was no interviews, no presentation, no meeting spot, no get-together, not even name tags. Even though they paid for travel costs and were so welcoming! So I think that would be a great thing to add in the future, because why else would you mind so much to have the makers come, if then you only send them home after watching? :)

    January 2017
    Helpful
    Image 6324
    Response from festival:

    Thank you Lisa, it's important to get a review from one of our visitors/ filmmakers!!
    Your movie was wonderful, we hope to meet you again and we are excited to watch your new film :)
    We will learn from our mistakes and will improve our skills!