We are thrilled to announce that the 15th edition of Glasgow Short Film Festival will be returning to venues, 23-27 March 2022. That means we’ll be running in person for the first time since 2019! Get ready for a jam-packed programme, taking place across Civic House, Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) and the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA). And for those of us who can’t join us in person, despair not… Thanks to our core funder, Screen Scotland, with support from The National Lottery and the Scottish Government, we’re glad to be making parts of the programme available online for the third year running. Look out for our full Programme Launch on 23 February, but for now, we’re delighted to announce our competition selection for 2022.
Glasgow Short Film Festival has two annual competitions: the Scottish Short Film Award which for this year has been renamed Scotland’s Year of Stories Short Film Award and the Bill Douglas Award for International Short Film which showcases new cinema from around the world. Across the two competitions, we will present 7 World Premieres and 16 UK Premieres.
International juries of filmmakers and curators select the winners of the Bill Douglas Award (cash prize of £1,000) and Scotland’s Year of Stories Short Film Award (cash prize of £1,500), whilst the GSFF22 audience will have the opportunity to choose their favourites to win the Scottish and International Audience Awards. Thanks to Film City Glasgow, the Scottish Audience Award has a cash prize of £1,000.
BILL DOUGLAS AWARD FOR INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM
After two years of small screens, the visual delights of this year’s International Competition are best experienced on the biggest screen possible. The selection reflects the qualities found in the work of Scotland’s own Bill Douglas: honesty, formal innovation, and cinematic storytelling that places sound and image centre stage.
Against our pandemic-informed expectations, we received over 4,000 submissions from across the globe for this year’s edition. With the help of our incredible team of submissions viewers we have landed on a beautiful selection including films that were awarded at some of the world’s most important film festivals as well as under-seen gems that took us by surprise, and a number of familiar faces returning with new work. It’s a line-up that directly and indirectly speaks to the times we live in and we’re thrilled to be able to share and discuss it with audiences in person.
The film selected for the BILL DOUGLAS AWARD FOR INTERNATIONAL SHORT FILM are as follows:
A PRESENT LIGHT | Diogo Costa Amarante | Portugal | Scottish Premiere
ALL OF YOUR STARS ARE BUT DUST ON MY SHOES | Haig Aivazian | Lebanon | Scottish Premiere
BESTIA | Hugo Covarrubias | Chile | Scottish Premiere
DAD’S SNEAKERS | Olha Zhurba | Ukraine | Scottish Premiere
DISPLACED | Samir Karahoda | Kosovo | Scottish Premiere
FIREFLIES | Léo Bittencourt | Brazil | Scottish Premiere
FURTHER AND FURTHER AWAY | Polen Ly | Cambodia | UK Premiere
HANDBOOK | Pavel Mozhar | Belarus, Germany | UK Premiere
HER VIOLET KISS | Bill Morrison | USA | UK Premiere
I GOTTA LOOK GOOD FOR THE APOCALYPSE | Ayce Kartal | France | Scottish Premiere
IMPOSSIBLE FIGURES AND OTHER STORIES I | Marta Pajek | Poland | Scottish Premiere
IN MY NETWORK | Randa Maroufi | France | UK Premiere
LOVE, DAD | Diana Cam Van Nguyen | Czech Republic | Scottish Premiere
MIR | Gorana Jovanović | Serbia | UK Premiere
NAUGHTY SPOT | Jean Costa | France | Scottish Premiere
NAYA | Sebastian Mulder | Netherlands | UK Premiere
NEON PHANTOM | Leonardo Martinelli | Brazil | Scottish Premiere
NOIR-SOLEIL | Marie Larrivé | France | UK Premiere
ONE HUNDRED STEPS | Bárbara Wagner, Benjamin de Burca | Germany, France | Scottish Premiere
PARTY POSTER | Rishi Chandna | India | UK Premiere
PODESTA ISLAND | Stephanie Roland | Fed. States of Micronesia, France | UK Premiere
PRIDE | Claudrena N. Harold, Kevin Jerome Everson | USA | UK Premiere
SIERRA | Sander Joon | Estonia | UK Premiere
SQUISH! | Tulapop Saenjaroen | Thailand | UK Premiere
THERE IS EXACTLY ENOUGH TIME | Virgil Widrich, Oskar Salomonowitz | Austria | UK Premiere
THERE’S A GHOST OF ME | Mateo Vega | Netherlands | Scottish Premiere
WILL MY PARENTS COME TO SEE ME | Mo Harawe | Somalia, Austria, Germany | UK Premiere
More information on all selected films can be found on our programme pages.
SCOTLAND’S YEAR OF STORIES SHORT FILM AWARD
The Scottish competition at GSFF is the largest annual showcase of new Scottish film talent, championing diverse forms of cinematic storytelling, whether fiction, animation or documentary, in English, Gaelic, Scots or Urdu, Polish, Kurdish… The only eligibility criteria is that the filmmaker lives and works in Scotland.
This year the Scottish competition has been supported by the Year of Stories 2022 Community Stories Fund. This fund is being delivered in partnership between VisitScotland and Museums Galleries Scotland with support from National Lottery Heritage Fund thanks to National Lottery players.
The programme will be accompanied by a retrospective programme of early works by some of Scotland’s finest cinematic storytellers, to be announced later. We will also have the opportunity to bring new Scottish storytellers to a wide audience, at the festival, online and via a touring programme throughout 2022.
The film selected for the SCOTLAND’S YEAR OF STORIES SHORT FILM AWARD are as follows:
AWAKENING | Cat Bruce
BAHAR | Maryam Hamidi
THE BAYVIEW | Daniel Cook
THE BLACK WATCH | Cameron Cobb | World Premiere
BORN IN DAMASCUS | Laura Wadha
THE DEAD ARE JEWELS TO ME | Rose Hendry, Isla Badenoch | Scottish Premiere
DIVE | Oscar Sansom
FIELD NOTES ON LOVE | Sam Firth
FIRST STEP SWIM | Caitlin McMullan | World Premiere
THE FOX | Eirini Vasiliki Kalogera, Julia Kim Johnstone | Scottish Premiere
GO HOME | Razan Madhoon | Scottish Premiere
GROOM | Leyla Coll-O’Reilly | World Premiere
IDRISH | Adam Lewis Jacob | Scottish Premiere
IF YOU GET THE KNEES RIGHT THE REST WILL FOLLOW | Holly Mclean
INFECTIOUS NIHILISM AND SMALL METALLIC PIECES OF HOPE | James Price
KIN | Ruby Cedar | World Premiere
LIFE OF RILEY | Shaun Hughes | World Premiere
PROSOPAGNOSIA | Steven Fraser
RED ROOM | Bryan M. Ferguson
THE STONE AGE | Alison Piper
TOO ROUGH | Sean Lìonadh | Scottish Premiere
THE TYRANNY OF PETTY THINGS | Cameron Nicoll | World Premiere
WE KNOW A BETTER WORD THAN HAPPY | Helen McCrorie | Scottish Premiere
More information on all selected films can be found on our programme pages.
Further programme announcements for GSFF22 will be made on Wednesday 23 February. Audiences can expect dynamic programmes featuring world-class films as well as GSFF’s regular European Film Academy shorts programme and the ever-popular Comedy, Horror and Family-Friendly programmes.
We’re also pleased to announce that The Skinny will be returning as an official media partner for GSFF22. The Skinny will be supporting a programme at this year’s festival to be announced on 23 February.
All GSFF22 programmes will be captioned for D/deaf and Hard of Hearing audiences and all Scottish Competition Q&As will be BSL interpreted. This year’s edition will continue to implement a Pay What You Can sliding scale for tickets with the aim of improving access and inclusion.
Tickets for GSFF22 go on sale on Wednesday 23 February at midday. Press and Industry accreditation is now open. Explore the GSFF22 Competition selection by clicking here. We look forward to welcoming you back to Glasgow Short Film Festival very, very soon!