#NowStreaming TERRA MATER – MOTHER LAND by Kantarama Gahigiri 🕳️ For our land and bones. At the end of the world. Technology and waste, in our lands, our systems, our bones. Wandering our spaces she cannot help but wonder, where is the space for healing?
Curated by @kurzfilmtage.oberhausen .
🌐 thisisshort.com
New program! ⛏️ Mainly Working (And Not Playing)
Launched in the context of May 1st and the conversations surrounding Labour Day, this program reflects on the many forms work takes across contemporary life — and the realities behind them.
Migration, manufacturing, labour supply, gig economy, all these narratives trace the evolution of labour, revealing how economic forces define personal destinies and collective memory, serving as lenses through which we explore how work has shaped––and continues to shape––our lives, societies, and identities. They outline the profound tension between survival and selfhood, movement and belonging, shifting class structures, reminding us that labour is not just what we do, but who we are becoming.
A program curated by @25fps_festival .
Watch at thisisshort.com. Subscriptions starting at €0.99/month (or €9.99/year).
#NowStreaming 💭 DREAM DELIVERY by Yuan Zheng
An exhausted delivery man is lying on a park bench, deep asleep. In a dream he finds himself in a Shanzhai park with his fellows: they have all turned into still statues in contrast to their everyday exhaustion in the pursuit of speed and efficiency. The presence of these new labors shows the other side of China’s delirious economic progress, and the close-ups temporarily conceal the fact that they are hardly noticed in reality.
Part of “Mainly Working (And Not Playing)”, a short film program curated by 25 FPS and launching this May 1st, exploring themes of labour and work.
Now streaming at thisisshort.com.
International Short Film Festival Oberhausen is on this week.
From April 28 to May 3, the 72nd edition brings its competitions to the big screen. And to This Is Short.
All competition programs are available online for 24 hours each, in alternating slots. If you’re not in Oberhausen, this is your window.
Start watching. The films won’t stay long.
🌐 thisisshort.com
#NowStreaming 🇵🇸 UNDR by Kamal Aljafari.
“This essay film employs a range of archival perspectives to look at Palestinian land and its peoples through history. As helicopter footage reveals an austere gaze on natural land and people engaged in their daily occupations, one is reminded of the unrelenting state of aerial surveillance that Palestinians continue to live under. As children play hide-and-seek, the footage records the erosion of the land caused by frequent detonations. The film is as much a sombre meditation as a witness to the irreversible changes brought on by imperial acts of control.”
— Najrin Islam & Cindy Chehab
This short film is part of “Mapping Absentia”, curated by Najrin Islam and Cindy Chehab, included in “Siesmic Shifts” — a cohort of three programs developed within the European Workshop for New Curators #2. This collection was curated by the participants Alexandra Sirotenko, Cindy Chehab, Mai Nguyen, Najrin Islam, Raouf Moussa, and Tania Hernández González, under the mentorshop of Daniella Shreir, during the 2025 editions of Lago Film Fest and Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival (BIEFF).
The European Workshop for New Curators #2 is a project by the European Network for Film Discourse (The END) and Talking Shorts, funded by the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme.
Now streaming at thisisshort.com.
New program! 🌫️ Points Of Reference: Lukas Marxt
A deep humming accompanies images of barren landscapes, circular ripples on water, tracks in the desert––in his work, Lukas Marxt explores inhospitable regions and the human points of reference that can be found within them. To do so, he travels to volcanic islands, uranium mines, and coastlines, documenting the ways in which people inscribe themselves into these environments. Some of these traces are fleeting and quickly disappear, while others are highly developed, firmly anchored, and permeated by capitalist structures of exploitation. Marxt draws on the aesthetics of documentary film, sometimes using long, static shots, and at other times dynamic circular movements and drone flights. The places he investigates often lie on the margins of economic and political centers and tell visually powerful stories about nature, people, and their interrelations.
A program curated by @kurzfilmtage.oberhausen .
Watch at thisisshort.com. Subscriptions starting at €0.99/month (or €9.99/year).
#NowStreaming 💨 ENTRE TEMPS by Ana Vaz.
“Opening the programme, ENTRE TEMPS invites us to encounter land(scape) and the structures within it as something relational rather than inert. Time gathers in space. What appears still carries traces of earlier presences and latent projections. Looking becomes a way of entering into relation with place, sensing how past and future are already present within it. The film sets the tone for the programme: land and architecture are not neutral backdrops but active fields that shape perception even as we project meaning onto them.”
— Raouf Moussa & Tania Hernández González
This short film is part of “Tremors, Aftershock & Rupture”, curated by Raouf Moussa and Tania Hernández González, included in “Siesmic Shifts” — a cohort of three programs developed within the European Workshop for New Curators #2. This collection was curated by the participants Alexandra Sirotenko, Cindy Chehab, Mai Nguyen, Najrin Islam, Raouf Moussa, and Tania Hernández González, under the mentorshop of Daniella Shreir, during the 2025 editions of Lago Film Fest and Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival (BIEFF).
The European Workshop for New Curators #2 is a project by the European Network for Film Discourse (The END) and Talking Shorts, funded by the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme.
Now streaming at thisisshort.com.
New program! 📣 Image Acts: Aylin Kuryel & Fırat Yücel
Image Acts is the name under which Amsterdam-based filmmakers duo Aylin Kuryel and Fırat Yücel bring together some of their work, produced both collectively and individually. Their work focuses on the position of dissidents, protestors, and unrepresented voices. Using a mixture of media forms, they reflect on the different ways that people speak up and raise their voice to claim back their space.
A program curated by @goshort .
An interview with the filmmaker duo, conducted by Jara Majerus, was published on Go Short and is also available on This Is Short.
Subscriptions start at €0.99/month (or €9.99/year).
Watch at thisisshort.com.
#NowStreaming 🌋 VOLCANO: WHAT DOES A LAKE DREAM? by Diana Vidrascu.
“Diana Vidrascu brings deep geological time to the celluloid surface. Layering images of the Azores islands, where new land masses erupt from the ocean or sink back into tectonic faults within days, with locals’ testimonies, the film strip becomes a carrier of memory inscribed in the ever-changing landscape. It is in these moments of rupture that human and geological times momentarily converge. The film’s tactile rhythm builds toward a crescendo of flicker and colour, making past, present, and future coalesce into a site where earth’s time is remarkably visible and sensorially present.”
— Alexandra Sirotenko & Mai Nguyen
This short film is part of “Fault Lines, Ash & Glitches”, curated by Alexandra Sirotenko and Mai Nguyen, included in “Siesmic Shifts” — a cohort of three programs developed within the European Workshop for New Curators #2. xThis collection was curated by the participants Alexandra Sirotenko, Cindy Chehab, Mai Nguyen, Najrin Islam, Raouf Moussa, and Tania Hernández González, under the mentorshop of Daniella Shreir, during the 2025 editions of Lago Film Fest and Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival (BIEFF).
The European Workshop for New Curators #2 is a project by the European Network for Film Discourse (The END) and Talking Shorts, funded by the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme.
Now streaming at thisisshort.com.
New program! 🗑️ What To Do With All The Rubbish?
Every day, humanity produces more than five million tons of waste. Only small amounts can be recycled, the rest ends up on garbage dumps, in nature and oceans. The films in this collection deal with rubbish and the consequences it has on our ecosystems, animals and humans and how it inevitably inscribes itself into our planet.
A program curated by @kurzfilmtage.oberhausen .
Watch at thisisshort.com. Subscriptions starting at €0.99/month (or €9.99/year).
#NowStreaming 📹 A TRANS WITH A MOVIE CAMERA by Frances Arpaia.
“Created in collaboration with trans people exploring their own representation, the short film merges time, people, and place into one. Frances Arpaia achieves this, considering the act of filmmaking, the medium, and the tools, as a way of representation in itself. The result is a collage, chaotic and anarchic, and precisely in these disorganised images the pure excitement about dissent identities and affections lies.”
— Ana Jiménez & Sara Simic
This short film is part of “Rotten Roots”, curated by Ana Jiménez and Sara Simic, included in (Un)Taming — a cohort of three programs developed within the European Workshop for New Curators #1. The collection was created by Ana Jiménez, Lan Mi Lê, Marian Freistühler, Regina Campos Ccarhuarupay, Sadaf Biglari, and Sara Simić under the mentorship of Laura Walde, during the 2025 editions of Filmfest Dresden and Vienna Shorts.
The European Workshop for New Curators #1 is an initiative by The European Network for Film Discourse (The END) and Talking Shorts, supported by the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme.
Now streaming at thisisshort.com.
🕳️ Now showing on This Is Short: “Mapping Absentia”
Curated by Najrin Islam & Cindy Chehab, “Mapping Absentia” explores the materiality of disappearance across land, water, and air. Tracing processes of erasure and accumulation, the films reflect on memory as layered, contested, and inscribed within landscapes—where histories are rewritten, obscured, and persist through their traces.
This programme is part of the cohort of three programmes “Seismic Shifts”, curated by Alexandra Sirotenko, Cindy Chehab, Mai Nguyen, Najrin Islam, Raouf Moussa, and Tania Hernández González, the participants of the European Workshop for New Curators #2, which took place at the 2025 editions of Lago Film Fest and Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival (BIEFF). The group was mentored by Daniella Shreir.
The European Workshop for New Curators #2 is a project by the European Network for Film Discourse (The END) and Talking Shorts, funded by the Creative Europe MEDIA Programme.
Streaming on @this.is.short for the next three months.
.
.
.
@lagofilmfest@bieff@cindychehab@notnajjrin@kamalaljafarifilm@enocarka@salamundra@danielasadifaezi@mzxzdz@creative.eu@_raoufmoussa_@taniahg___@daniellas #shortfilm #shortfilms #nowshowing
