Oxford Shorts (formerly The Oxford International Short Film Festival known as OXISFF) celebrates the diversity and creativity of short films. We accept both fictional and factual entries with great stories which stir the emotions, have strong characters and unique voices or evocative worlds. Selected films will be considered for awards which are judged by a panel of industry filmmakers prior to the event across various categories.
We have screened over 300 films live and online and given 69 awards since our inaugural festival in March 2019. These entries have included BAFTA/BIFA winning films and best short film nominees at Cannes, Sundance, and TIFF. Aside from screenings we've also held over 100 Q&As with filmmakers (including with Oscar Winners) and have held a series of industry related workshops.
Our 2023 festival will once again be held at the lovely grounds at St John's College (University of Oxford). There will be limited (and very reasonably priced) onsite accommodation available for International members who wish to travel to the festival to represent their films and get a taste of the Oxford experience.
You can view some of our previous Festival Trailers on Vimeo here: https://vimeo.com/OXISFF
Being filmmakers ourselves, we know how frustrating it can be to submit a film but not know the reason why the film has not been selected. We would like to see this change, so if your submission was unsuccessful and you would like to know why - please let us know and we will try our best to provide some brief feedback for you! We'd like to think this is one of the things which make our festival unique.
If you are a local filmmaker from Oxfordshire, or you have already had a film selected at one of our previous festivals, we encourage you to get in contact before submitting your entry (we will be keen to support you)!
We are still transitioning from OXISFF to Oxford Shorts but we are open for 2023 film submissions. Find out more by following our website link.
Shortlisted films will automatically be considered for any eligible awards in the following categories:
- Best Film
- Best Documentary
- Best Director
- Best Lead Actor
- Best Lead Actress
- Best Young Performer
- Best Cinematography
- Best Screenplay
- Best Editing
- Best Production Design
- Best Music Score
- Best Sound
- Best Special Effects
Additional awards may be added closer to the event.