The competition programmes feel the pulse of current global filmmaking, transforming the city into an international short film hub for six days. The best works from all competition categories will be honoured with prizes at the Award Ceremony on Sunday.
Here we present the latest national short films. Once again, the Swiss selection includes numerous premieres, offering plenty of room for discoveries. Join us on Sunday at the Award Ceremony to witness how the jury awards various prizes to the best films of this year’s festival edition.
With the Sparks programmes, we hope to spark a passion for the medium of short film. Featuring highlights from this year’s submissions, Sparks I & II are competition programmes that represent a broad range of current filmmaking. The selection is meant to appeal to multigenerational audiences and inspire discussion. Showcasing a diverse film culture beyond the mainstream and YouTube clips, the programmes offer an ideal introduction to the world of shorts. At the Award Ceremony on Sunday, the youth jury will award the prize for the best film from the Sparks section.
Kurzfilmtage’s annual Swiss Film School Day is a showcase of Switzerland’s six undergraduate degree programmes. Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL), the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD), the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), the Lucerne School of Design, Film and Art – Video/Animation, and the International Academy of Audiovisual Sciences (CISA) present a selection of their recent short films in three sessions followed by film talks led by Filmexplorer. Admission to the Swiss Film School Day is free – a great opportunity to get a first glimpse of Kurzfilmtage!
Iran has been shaped by profound political and social changes, that have had a lasting impact on both domestic and diasporic filmmaking. The Focus: Shifting Grounds – Framing Iran takes this as an occasion to sharpen our awareness of the complexity of a cinema that defies simple explanations. Six programmes bring together historical and contemporary works created in Iran and the diaspora. These range from the imagery of oil to questions of identity and self-determination outside social norms, from myth and reality to diverse forms of resistance and works of the independent film movement Cinema-ye Azad of the 1970s. The films combine documentary, fictional and experimental forms. The focus is not on the country itself, but on how Iran is seen, narrated, and imagined – and how cinema can keep reframing these images.
Some films tell stories, while others tell us about cinema itself. To mark the 30th anniversary of Kurzfilmtage, this Focus is dedicated to the medium itself. Across three programmes, these short films explore filmmaking, its emotional power, and ways of thinking in images. This is our love letter to film and to all it entails – the magic of making, feeling, and thinking cinema. For the Love of Cinema.
What if the future is already here? Gala Hernández López explores the strange worlds where technology, money, and desire meet – from incels and crypto dreams to cryonics, self-optimization, and the possibility of controlling our dreams. Moving between documentary and science fiction, her films reveal how digital fantasies become real desires, markets, and infrastructures, asking whether we still dream of the future, or whether our systems have begun to dream for us.
This section showcases recent short films from Zurich, Switzerland, and around the world screened out of competition. For short film buffs who are unafraid of strange or profound works with cult potential – discover some rare finds from our treasure chest!
This section presents programmes on topics that our curators are passionate about or that are simply fun. From historical works calling for social cohesion or exploring how we deal with memory to perspectives on femininity and shorts that let us experience moments of cringe: there’s a lot to discover in our Special Programmes.
Stories for children aged 6+ kindle curiosity, empathy, and creativity, eliciting a sense of wonder. And our selection of serious, amusing, and exciting shorts for kids aged 9+ inspires discussion, offering families a great introduction to the universe of short films. In collaboration with the Magic Lantern, Kurzfilmtage offers a unique filmgoing experience for young viewers and their families.
Whether with our festive Opening, a moving Award Ceremony, or the Best of programmes on Sunday – we open and close Kurzfilmtage in style. Together with filmmakers, audiences, and partners, we celebrate the art of short film, showing that shorts are made for the big screen.
From the cinema to the dance floor: Kurzfilmtage invites you to shake a leg to live bands and DJs. Concerts and parties – including our legendary closing party – round off the festival experience. Kraftfeld has once again compiled a delicious programme for night owls. Come, listen, dance!
Kurzfilmtage’s Industry Events consist of the Swiss Film School Day, the Industry Lab, and the Creators’ Room. They offer film professionals an opportunity for networking and for discussing current issues, creative methods, and aesthetic trends.
Cinema is based on the premise that we accept the fake as real. The six short films in this programme force us to shift perspective. They don’t show the world as it is. Instead, they demonstrate how images shape the world into what we believe to be true. To enjoy We Think Cinema, we encourage viewers to look closely and think twice.
Please note that the film you are about to see is made with real material taken from film history, namely the disclaimers and warnings that frame the existence of many films. However, any collusion between art and industry, any conflict of interest between creative freedom and the law, or any hint of moralism on the life of images is purely incidental and unintentional.
Indefinite Pitch James N. Kienitz Wilkins / USA 2016 / 23'18" / black & white / English / Doc/Exp
A pathetic pitch for a movie set in Berlin slips into the murkiness of memory, and histories best forgotten or purposely ignored.
Ciel Dégagé 3/10ème Jérôme Cognet/Karen Luong / France 2018 / 6'6" / DCP / colour/black & white / French / Exp
This film is composed of photographic flashes from filmic works and refers to the idea of projection, both in the cinematographic sense and in its most devastating form: the nuclear bomb. The title refers to the words of Major Claude Eatherly, chief pilot of a weather reconnaissance aircraft, the B-29 Superfortress «Straight Flush», which flew over Hiroshima on 6 August 6 1945. Eatherly sends Paul Tibbets, pilot of the «Enola Gay» carrying the atomic bomb to be dropped on one of three Japanese cities (Hiroshima, Kokura, Nagasaki), a weather message indicating «Cloud cover less than 3/10 at all altitudes». In other words, the weather conditions are largely favourable for dropping the atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima.
The Girl Chewing Gum John Smith / United Kingdom 1976 / 12' / black & white / English / Doc/Exp
In «The Girl Chewing Gum», a commanding voice-over appears to direct the action in a busy London street. As the instructions become more absurd and fantasized, we realize that the supposed director (not the shot) is fictional; he only describes – rather than prescribes – the events that take place before him.
Hacked Circuit Deborah Stratman / USA 2014 / 15'8" / colour / English / Doc/Exp
Multiple layers of fabrication and imposition are laid bare by this fluidly choreographed, single-shot embodiment of control. Sonic surveillance meets the black art of foley.
People on Sunday Tulapop Saenjaroen / Thailand 2020 / 20'53" / colour / Thai / Exp/Fic
«People on Sunday» (2020) is a reinterpretation, response, and homage to the 1930 German silent film «Menschen am Sonntag». However, this response comes from a different context, a different country, a different era, and different working conditions. It tells episodic stories of moving-image workers who are employed in the same performance-art video project about free time.
There are films that tell us a story, and there are films that show us how stories are told in the first place. So-called meta-cinema takes cinema itself as its subject: filmmaking and its apparatus, the acts of watching and being watched, ways of perceiving and thinking in moving images. These films point the camera at what we usually overlook because we’re so immersed in it, sitting in the dark, transfixed, staring at the screen. Meta-films reveal the seams, the tricks, the apparatus – but instead of demystifying the medium in the process, they make it all the more captivating.
Thus, we have chosen the theme of meta-cinema to mark the 30th anniversary of Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur. Over the course of thirty editions, the festival has screened, defended, promoted, and cherished short films – so a Focus on the medium itself seems like an obvious choice. For the Love of Cinema is nothing more and nothing less than a love letter to film. A love rooted not so much in nostalgia, but in curiosity. To love cinema also means wanting to understand it: its mechanics, its emotional power, its influence on our worldview. We have compiled short films that share this love and bring it to life on screen. Some are tongue-in-cheek, some melancholy, and some radically inquisitive.
To love cinema also means wanting to learn from it. That’s why this Focus is structured around an idea formulated by the Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. He conceived of learning as an interplay of hand, heart, and mind – a holistic approach to education that combines doing, feeling, and understanding. This triad lends itself well to cinema: every film is created by the hand that makes it, speaks to the heart it touches, and shapes the mind with which we interpret the world. This threefold structure is reflected in our three programmes: We Make Cinema, We Feel Cinema, and We Think Cinema.
It all starts with work. A film consists of craftsmanship. It is rehearsed, shot on set, edited, set to music, and brought to life by people we rarely see on-screen because they don’t appear in front of the camera. The first programme presents works about the process of filmmaking: about patience, skill, and the many hands that go into creating images.
Films don’t remain confined to the screen. They seep into our memory, blend with our existing mental images, and become part of us – precisely because (Western) film culture is so influential and popular worldwide and has such a profound impact on our society. The second programme is dedicated to cinema’s emotional resonance. It is about what films do to us, and what we carry within us as a result, long after the lights have come back on.
The way we think about reality – and the way we think in images – depends on how these images are created, framed, and asserted. The third programme takes the deeply rooted Western notion that seeing is believing and defines cinema itself as a school of thought. These films remind us that every image is a statement – and that seeing always also means thinking.
Our hope is to light a spark – for making, feeling, and thinking cinema. For the Love of Cinema.
John Canciani and Laura Walde
We Think Cinema
Images result from actions, gestures, and decisions: a hand guiding a camera; a voice giving instructions; a decision in the editing room that puts a statement in a specific context. Normally, we don’t notice these processes. Quite the opposite: cinema is based on the premise that we accept the fake as real. In We Think Cinema, we shift perspective and look at the very acts of making and showing. To quote Godard, the short films in this programme are a «forme qui pense» – they do not show the world as it is, but as we shape it into what we believe to be true.
The programme begins tongue-in-cheek: Maxime Marinot’s «The Film You’re About to See» analyzes itself before we even get to see the film. It’s a work about framing and manipulating expectations. Disguised as a sales pitch to a producer, James N. Kienitz Wilkins’s «Indefinite Pitch» explores the interplay between history, language, and the question of who owns our images.
Light as enlightenment, light as a core element of cinema. And what if the lights go out? Karen Luong and Jérôme Cognet take this metaphor to its extreme in «Ciel Dégagé 3/10ème»: the flashing light that brings an image into being can also obliterate the world. The found footage film explores the notion of blinding – both in the cinematographic sense and in its most devastating form: the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. This raises questions: Who decides? Who is allowed to see, who is allowed to speak? In «The Girl Chewing Gum», John Smith directs the action in a London street with nothing but his voice, until his claim to control slowly but inexorably – and comically – unravels. In «Hacked Circuit», the camera circles a studio of Foley artists working on Francis Ford Coppola’s classic «The Conversation» (1974). Starting from this cinematic quote, Deborah Stratman’s short film evokes a sense of both paranoia and deceptive certainty. We believe what we see and hear, yet we’re unsure what exactly is happening. In this blurring of lines between seeing, hearing, and understanding lies the parallel to the art of Foley and to the climate of state surveillance. Finally, in «People on Sunday», Tulapop Saenjaroen depicts exhausted city dwellers performing their leisure time until work and leisure become indistinguishable, and life itself turns into a performance.
Constructed images make a claim to reality. Thus, to enjoy We Think Cinema, we encourage viewers look closely and think twice.
Internationale Kurzfilmtage Winterthur is Switzerland’s major short film festival. For six days every November, we transform the city into a dynamic short film hub.
Kurzfilmtage offers discoveries for everyone: our thoughtfully compiled thematic programmes address current events or topics that our curators are passionate about. The competition programmes showcase the latest filmmaking from around the globe, while installations, performances, and other specials highlight the diversity of audiovisual forms. And a programme of special events including concerts, readings, and more enhance the festival experience.
The programme of the 30th Kurzfilmtage will be released on 14 October 2026.
A short film is not just a shorter film. Shorts are a distinct art form, which we showcase at our annual festival.
Short films come in all shapes and genres, and how long – or short – they are, varies quite a bit. Simpler production processes allow filmmakers to capture the zeitgeist and quickly respond to trends. Shorts can be entertaining or surprising, they can analyse society, take a political stance, or offer glimpses of worlds unknown to us.
We compile our short films into thematic programmes or specific sections, such as our competitions, paying close attention to the selection and sequence of films in each programme. All you need to enjoy short films is an open mind for new discoveries and surprises.
Competitions
Recent short films from around the world. The best shorts will be presented with awards on Sunday evening.
Hors Concours
Recent short films from Zurich, Switzerland, and around the world screened out of competition.
Focus
Films that explore a region, a social phenomenon, or an artistic trend.
Person in Focus
A spotlight on the work of a filmmaker.
Special Programmes
Short film programmes dedicated to topics that our curators are passionate about – or that are simply fun.
Family Programmes
Short film fun for young viewers aged 6+ and for the whole family.
Expanded Cinema
Installations, performances, and exhibitions present the medium of film in unfamiliar forms.
Special Events
Concerts, parties, readings, and many other events enhance the festival experience.
Talks & Panels
Moderated talks and panels after the screenings offer additional context and insight into films and themes.
Industry Events
A wide range of educational events and networking opportunities.
