19th Vilnius Short Film Festival Reveals Its International Competition Line-Up
From January 21 to 27, the 19th Vilnius Short Film Festival will invite audiences to experience an exceptional selection of short films from across the globe, showcasing works from six continents. Films from countries as diverse as Cambodia, the United States, the Philippines, New Zealand, Singapore, Mexico, Georgia, and South Korea will be presented to the festival audiences. This year’s edition brings together an outstanding collection of award-winning films recognized by the world’s major festivals. Across six International Competition programmes, viewers will discover works that have been nominated and celebrated at the Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Locarno, and Sundance film festivals, as well as the European Film Awards. The competing films will be assessed by an international jury of film industry professionals from Finland, Serbia, and Lithuania.
As the Vilnius Short Film Festival continues to grow in international prominence, interest from filmmakers worldwide has reached new heights. Nearly 3,000 short films were submitted for consideration this year, from which the festival’s programming team selected a striking lineup of the most compelling works. This year six International Competition programmes feature 32 films representing different parts of the world.
Following a milestone achievement last year, when it became the first Oscar qualifying film festival in Lithuania, the Vilnius Short Film Festival strengthened its international standing in 2025, which led to it becoming the country’s first qualifying festival for the European Film Awards. As a result, films screened in the 19th edition’s Competition will be eligible for both Oscar and European Film Award nominations.
This year, the International Competition explores themes of memory and resistance, family and relationships, the fundamental struggle for existence and physicality, offering a chance to reflect, dream, laugh, and engage with the richness and diversity of the world as well as insights of short film makers.
One of the programmes called Spirits Among Us contains a pinch of sophisticated metaphysics. In this programme, spirits take on different forms – from a grandmother trying to save her grandson from marriage to a chilling story told by a stranger on a train. Spirits among us are often made up of our memories, fears and historical traumas. With their different intonations, the films in this programme invoke this capacious metaphor to address what surrounds us but often remains intangible or unjustly forgotten. The programme features the winner of the prestigious Sundance Film Festival.
Rebellion can be overt, allegorical, or subtle, sometimes thought-provoking or eye-opening, and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. In the films of the programme Anatomy of a Rebellion, diverse in their context and mood, the protagonists fight for their rights and resist injustice in one form or another. From taking on drug cartels or imposed gender roles and patriarchy, to resisting insomnia, occupiers, or migration control… The programme features a lot of inspiring heroes and bold cinematic choices, as well as the winner of the Cannes Semaine de la Critique
Secrets are everywhere, permeating everyday life and the pages of history. From the most intimate to the public, secrets come in many forms. The five films in the programme Islands of Secrets set out to unravel them in very different ways. Finnish swamps, Armenian star-shaped stones, an Indonesian man who can give away parts of his body, memories of a boys’ art school in China, and Vietnamese islands set against a special soundtrack – this programme has it all in documentary, fictional and animated form, including the best film of the Locarno Film Festival.
Featuring winners of the Cannes and Venice film festivals, programme I Can’t Without You explores the multi-faceted parent-child relationships. A young mother, so attached to her baby that she cannot leave her alone for a minute, a boy trying to wrap his head around a road accident caused by his mother, a brother mourning his identical twin—these are the stories of intertwined family ties that are difficult to break away from and must be felt. Everybody will find something that speaks to them.
The inspiration for the title of the programme Waiting for Apocalypse came from one of the films, a story about Francis Ford Coppola’s famous Apocalypse Now. Watching this programme, it seems that the world has gone mad as the anxiety about the future is growing, and this collection of films reflects that in one way or another. Exploitation of people, war, cynical attempts to profit at the expense of others, division, and a touch of metaphysics… While these are difficult topics, the struggle of the heroes is inspiring, and their humanity instils hope.
What do you do when your body changes beyond your control, invoking inappropriate responses from the people around you? Do you hide or try to accept yourself and cope with it? Romantic dates full of awkward questions, a league that brings uncontrollable change, or a breakup that forces reflection — all the films in the programme Body Language are reflections of bodily transformations. In addition, the programme presents the Golden Bear winner at the renowned Berlinale, Lloyd Wong, Unfinished.
This year, films for the Competition have been selected by film researcher and curator Mantė Valiūnaitė, film director, scriptwriter and educator Andrius Blaževičius, and film critic, journalist Ieva Šukytė. International Competition preselection team: filmmaker and educator Lukas Kacinauskas, screenwriters Kristina Abromaitytė and Rokas Jonas, filmmaker, critic, programmer Monika Navickaitė, as well as film curator and cultural project coordinator Milda Valiulytė.
Like every year, an international jury will assess the competition and announce the winners, selecting the best films of the International and National Competitions, and awarding one film with the festival Grand Prix.
This year’s jury consists of Riina Mikkonen (Finland), executive director and programmer at Tampere Film Festival; Serbian film critic Tara Karajica, programmer and head of the industry program at PÖFF Shorts; Vytautas Katkus, internationally renowned Lithuanian cinematographer and director whose 2022 short film Cherries became the first Lithuanian short film to be selected in the official competition at Cannes, and his debut feature, The Visitor, won the Best Director Award at Karlovy Vary Film Festival.
International Competition titles:
- Grandma Nai Who Played Favorites, dir. Chheangkea, Cambodia, France, USA
- To the Woods, dir. Agnès Patron, France
- Objects Do Not Randomly Fall From the Sky, dir. Maria Estela Paiso, Phillipines
- The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing, dir. Theo Panagopoulos, UK
- Before the Sea Forgets, dir. Ngọc Duy Lê, Singapore
- God is Shy, dir. Jocelyn Charles, France
- Family Sunday, dir. Gerardo Del Razo, Mexico
- happiness, dir. Fırat Yücel, Netherlands, Turkey
- Critical Condition, dir. Mila Zhluktenko, Germany
- Allrecipes (Stuffed Manifesto), dir. David de Rozas, USA, Spain
- The Men’s Land, dir. Mariam Bakacho Khatchvani, Georgia
- The Swimsuit, dir. Amina Krami, Germany, Austria
- Memories Move Like Distant Islands, dir. Saarlotta Virri, Finland
- Hyena, dir. Altay Ulan Yang, USA, China
- Armat, dir. Anna Mkrtumyan, Armenia, Belgium, Portugal
- Sammi, Who Can Detach His Body Parts, dir. Rein Maychaelson, Indonesia
- Elysium Without Shores, dir. Arlette Quynh-Anh Tran, Vietnam, South Korea
- Without Kelly, dir. Lovisa Sirén, Sweden
- Lion Rock, dir. Prisca Bouchet, Nick Mayow, New Zeland
- My Brother, My Brother, dir. Abdelrahman Dnewar, Saad Dnewar, Egypt, France, Germany
- I’m Glad You’re Dead Now, dir. Tawfeek Barhom, Palestine, France, Greece
- Casa Chica, dir. Lau Charles, Mexico
- We Were the Scenery, dir. Christopher Radcliff, USA, Canada
- Unavailable, dir. Kyrylo Zemlyanyi, Ukraine, France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Netherlands
- Their Eyes, dir. Nicolas Gourault, France
- Upon Sunrise, dir. Stefan Ivančič, Kroatia, Spain, Serbia, Slovenia
- Astro, dir. Tim Ewalts, Netherlands
- Once in a Body, dir. María Cristina Pérez González, Colombia, USA
- Skin Despair, dir. Mireia Vilapuig, Spain
- If You Know You Know, dir. Bonita Rajpurohit, India, UK
- Ali, dir. Adnan Al Rajeev, Bangladesh, Phillipines
- Lloyd Wong, Unfinished, dir. Lesley Loksi Chan, Canada
The 19th edition of the Vilnius Short Film Festival will be screened in Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Šiauliai, and Panevėžys cinemas as well as ŽMONĖS Cinema platform and LRT Epika on 15–21 January.
More information and regularly updated programme at: www.filmshorts.lt
The festival is organised by the Lithuanian short film agency Lithuanian Shorts. The festival is partially sponsored by: Lithuanian Film Centre, Vilnius City Municipality, Creative Europe MEDIA. Institutional partners: Audiovisual works copyright association AVAKA, Goethe-Institut Lithuania, Sweden–Lithuania Cooperation Fund, LATGA Association, Creative Europe MEDIA Desk Lithuania, Institut français de Lituanie. Main media partner: LRT Epika.