The Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival is the most important short film event in the world. Masterpieces of animation, comedies, films on contemporary reality, genre films, student projects from the best schools in the world, real and fake documentaries… The selections comprising the seventy programs in this year’s Festival critically bring together the worlds of filmmakers of all stripes. Between the competitions and retrospectives, there are 400 hundred films from fifty countries that offer a formidable dive into a refreshing pool of young cinematic talent.

The Festival began in 1979 as part of a student film club and immediately took off. In 2023, it welcomed over 3,900 professionals from all over the world and totalled over 160,000 admissions.

PROGRAM:

Nefta Football Club - by Yves Piat / 2018 / France, Tunisia, Algeria / Fiction / 00:17:00

It's set in the south of Tunisia, on the border with Algeria, about two brothers (Eltayef Dhaoui and Mohamed Ali Ayari) who are football fans fall on a donkey lost in the middle of the desert that is carrying drugs and the brothers end up stealing the drugs from the donkey's pouch.

Une Orange de Jaffa - by Mohammed Almughanni / 2023 / France, Palestine, Poland / Fiction / 00:26:49

Mohammed, a young Palestinian, is desperately looking for a taxi to take him through a checkpoint to meet his mother, who is waiting for him on the Israeli side. At the checkpoint, the driver, Farouk, discovers that Mohammed has already failed to cross the border. Trouble begins...

Ertidad - by Mohammed Alhamoud / 2019 / Saoudi Arabia / Fiction / 00:14:20

A newlywed couple pay their first visit to the groom's hometown, a small southern Saudi village, where they will celebrate their marriage. Nervous and desperate for her in-laws' approval, the bride, Ayah, makes a daring choice, while her husband, Nader, tries to cope with the consequences. Their relationship is put to its first test.

If the sun drowned into an ocean of clouds - by Wissam Charaf / 2023 / Lebanon / Fiction / 00:20:00

Beirut, Lebanon. On the waterfront’s construction site, security agent Raed must prevent passing-by walkers from accessing the seaside. Yet as the horizon becomes each day more stifled by the construction, Raed makes peculiar encounters — mere dreams, or symbols of his desires?

Microbus - by Maggie Kamal / 2021 / Égypte, États-Unis / Fiction / 00:08:31

On just another regular day in Cairo, Egypt, 18-year-old Nour gets a call from her brother that he will no longer be able to pick her up. To avoid being late to work, Nour has to take a microbus, not knowing that this trip will forever change her.

The film program NAAS is a collaboration of several cultural institutions in the UAE, including the Goethe-Institut Gulf Region, the Embassy of France in the United Arab Emirates, the Embassy of Canada to the United Arab Emirates, the Italian Cultural Institute of Abu Dhabi, and in partnership with Manarat Al Sadiyyat. The program features a selection of predominantly independent films that explore relevant social and cultural topics for general and film-interested audiences in the UAE.