The Clermont-Ferrand short film festival celebrates its face-to-face return by celebrating Spain and dance

From the opening session on Friday January 28 at 8 p.m. to Saturday February 4 at 10:30 p.m., the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival will offer no less than 315 sessions devoted to short films.

Please note that the health protocol is applied at all sites and throughout the duration of the festival. The Sanitary Pass is required at the entrance to the rooms and the mask is compulsory from the age of six.

After a 2021 edition amputated by the Covid 19 pandemic and which had been forced to reinvent itself to adopt a 100% virtual formula, an entire organization has relaunched.

If the online passage of 2021 “confirmed the attachment of the public and professionals at this event, the Clermont team”is no less eager to reconnect with the joys of an edition in the flesh, in the projection rooms”, highlight the organizers of the festival, one of the most important events of its kind in the world.

Some 170,000 admissions were recorded during the last face-to-face edition in 2020. The festival is often a springboard for young directors, as evidenced each year by nominations for the Cannes festival or the Oscars. More than 8,100 films were presented this year to the selection committees, a figure slightly down on previous editions.

For the national competition, out of 50 films chosen, 30 were directed or co-directed by women and 12 are first films. After two years of health crisis, these films invite you to travel, interior or distant, while denouncing the violence of the world of work through familiar figures: teachers, workers, midwives, writers, unemployed, etc. The international competition includes 77 short films, with 55 countries represented from all continents.

Finally, the Lab competition, which brings together works on the margins mixing genres and freeing themselves from narration, has 27 films. The international jury is notably composed of Joanna Quinn, British director and reference in animation cinema, and Borja Cobeaga, Spanish director of multi-award winning short films.

Spain is honored at this 44th edition with a retrospective of 28 films reflecting the strong points of Spanish cinema over the past twenty years. “Spanish productions show an almost continuous presence in the main world festivals, with numerous awards and Spanish short films get more and more frequent nominations at the European Film Awards and the Oscars, say the organizers.

Another theme highlighted: dance, with a retrospective entitled let’s dance which draws up an eclectic panorama of all dance styles and invites choreographers interested in image and cinema: Philippe Découfé, Oona Doherty, Jann Gallois, etc. A total of 35 danced and dancing films.

It is also the return this year of the short film market, meeting of professionals, which will bring together exhibitors from 32 countries. The prizes will be awarded during the closing ceremony on February 5. With a newcomer this year: the Queer Film Prize. In association with the Queer Palm of Cannes, it will distinguish a film from one of the three competitions related to LGBT themes and beyond, “open to a world resistant to norms”.

Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival from January 28 to February 5, 2022.

4€ each

€35 – the fifteen-session pass