THE LINEUP OF shnit worldwide shortsfestival '23 EDITION

The shnit worldwide shortsfestival 2025 proudly presents its official lineup, where storytelling takes center stage in bold, brief, and brilliant ways! This year’s lineup showcases a vibrant collection of cinematic gems, each under 40 minutes, crafted by visionary filmmakers from around the globe.

From heart-wrenching dramas to laugh-out-loud comedies, thought-provoking documentaries to experimental adventures, our curated selection promises to captivate, inspire, and spark conversation. Join us for a celebration of creativity, diversity, and the power of concise storytelling that leaves a lasting impact.

Celebrating its 23rd edition, shnit continues to unite audiences in over 5 continents with a unique multi-city format, presenting award-winning and premiere short films. The 2025 lineup is a testament to creative storytelling, cultural diversity, and cinematic innovation.

Whether you’re a film enthusiast or first-time viewer, the shnit 2025 lineup offers something for everyone. Explore themes that challenge, inspire, and move – all in the powerful format of short film.

WORLDWIDE COMPETITION I

WORLDWIDE COMPETITION I is charged with memory, movement, rage, and rebirth.

Stories of fathers, mothers, and distant homelands unfold alongside generative algorithms, musical heirlooms, and adolescent ruptures. Emotions simmer beneath the surface—until they don’t. These films explore identity through tension: personal, political, digital. Nostalgia is unstable, family is fragile, and culture is both weapon and anchor. The past returns—reanimated, reframed, or simply refused.

From the algorithmic to the autobiographical, this program pulses with creative unrest. Nothing here is passive. Everything wants to move, shift, or scream.

IF YOU’RE HAPPY | 18 Min| Phoebe Arnstein | United Kingdom

DATA FLESH | 4 Min | Felipe Elgueta | Chile

BOLOUR [بلور] | 16 Min | Helia Behrooz | Iran

FATHER FATHER | 11 Min | Jozsef Trefeli | Australia

PUNTER | 13 Min | Jason Adam Maselle | South Africa

MAYBE ELEPHANTS | 16 Min | Torill Kove | Canada

CRUST

WORLDWIDE COMPETITION II

WORLDWIDE COMPETITION II is where things get raw.

These short films cut deep—into skin, memory, and emotion. They trace the sharp edge between belonging and exclusion, connection and disconnection, survival and surrender. There’s blood in the soil, silence in the fallout, and tension behind every glance. Masculinity is stripped bare. Girlhood walks home alone. Grief dances in circles. Love, loss, and danger blur into something hauntingly intimate. This program doesn’t just push boundaries—it questions why they were there in the first place.

Visceral, unapologetic, and emotionally unfiltered, these are stories that don’t flinch.

CRUST [KRUSTE] | 25 Min | Jens Kevin Georg | Germany

SHKËNDIJË | 4 Min | Kea Gargiulo | Australia

DON’T BE LATE, MYRA | 15 Min | Afia Serena Nathaniel | Pakistan

CIRCLE CIRCLE CIRCLE CIRCLE | 12 Min | Katherine Skelton, Libby Ewing | United States

THE BOY WITH WHITE SKIN [L’ENFANT À LA PEAU BLANCHE] | 15 Min | Simon Panay | Senegal

JASMINE TEA | 6 Min | Javier Chacon | Venezuela

AICHA

WORLDWIDE COMPETITION III

WORLDWIDE COMPETITION III is a fever dream of grief, satire, paranoia, and collapse.

These films move between dystopian futures, haunted presents, and absurd alternate histories—where nothing is stable, and everything is under pressure. Emotions fracture under the weight of silence. Bureaucracy meets apocalypse. A child waits for parents who won’t come back. Love is theorized by philosophers and flattened by algorithms. Political tension boils over in diners and sound studios, while strange energies—digital, spiritual, historical—hum beneath the surface, waiting to break through. From climate anxiety to emotional detachment, from techno-surrealism to existential dread, these short films deliver unease with elegance—and chaos with precision.

Unpredictable, unsettling, and uncomfortably timely.

AICHA | 25 Min | Sanaa El Alaoui | Morocco

PROFESSOR SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK ON THE PROBLEM WITH ONLINE DATING | 14 Min | Mardo El-Noor | New Zealand

ENCUENTRO AMERICANO | 11 Min | E.T. Vazquez | United States

HYMN OF THE PLAGUE [ГИМН ЧУМЕ] | 13 Min | Alexander Epikhov, Dimitri Gorbaty, Philipp Ivanov, Ataka51 | Russia, Germany

BRIELLA | 12 Min | Emily Mazariegos | Guatemala

QUOTA [QUOTUM] | 2 Min | Job, Joris & Marieke | Netherlands

KARATEKA

HOT GREY | MAGIC MIX | INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

HOT GREY | MAGIC MIX is a collision of the uncanny, the intimate, and the absurd—where reality unravels at the edges and nothing is quite what it seems.

This block pulses with strange energy: mystical pregnancies, haunted melodies, fractured memories, bleeding bodies, and post-carceral disorientation all share the frame. History bleeds into the present, innocence clashes with trauma, and small moments spark existential spirals. Women fight—on the mat, in their minds, against systems, against fate. The supernatural slips in through cracks in logic. Humor crashes into horror. And sometimes, music is the most dangerous thing of all. These films refuse to fit into neat genres. They flicker between the surreal and the painfully real, dragging viewers into a cinematic twilight zone that’s seductive, disorienting, and quietly explosive.

Welcome to the mix. It’s magic. It’s grey. It burns slow and hits hard.

IMMACULATA | 21 Min | Kim Lêa Sakkal | Germany

KARATEKA | 16 Min | Florence Fauquet | France

BERLIN-LICHTENBERG | 7 Min | Franz Wanner | Switzerland, Germany

PAST BEYOND [FUTUR ANTÉRIEUR] | 16 Min | Amélie Navarro, Gaëtan D’Agostino | Belgium

THE EGGREGORES’ THEORY | 15 Min | Andrea Gatopoulos | Italy

CROAK SHOW | 4 Min | Suresh Eriyat | India

MARRIAGE UNPLUGGED

SILENT PINK | MAGIC MIX | INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

SILENT PINK | MAGIC MIX is twisted, tender, and totally unfiltered.

These films slip between absurdity and emotional rawness, where satire meets sci-fi, and broken people face even more broken systems—with humor, violence, and a weird kind of grace. From slaughterhouses to sex robot shops, comas to call centers, these shorts dive headfirst into the surreal mechanics of modern life. Time travel is triggered by a sneeze. Marriage therapy involves artificial lovers. Psychic readings blur into something real. And behind it all: grief, rage, shame, and longing that can’t quite be spoken—but might be screamed. Bodies change. Minds glitch. Love malfunctions.

SILENT PINK isn’t quiet. It hums, it laughs, it mutters strange truths under its breath. You just have to lean in and listen.

ASTRO | 16 Min | Tim Ewalts | Netherlands

MY TEENAGE BLACKOUT [J’AI AVALÉ UNE CHENILLE] | 10 Min | Basile Khatir | France

MERCENAIRE | 15 Min | Pier-Philippe Chevigny | Canada

SNEEZECEPTION | 2 Min | Petr Hostas | Czech Republic

MARRIAGE UNPLUGGED | 14 Min | Kim Nüesch, Florine Nüesch | Switzerland

THE COCKROACH | 20 Min | Mary Pat Bentel | United States

HUN TUN

NEON BLACK | MAGIC MIX | INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

NEON BLACK | MAGIC MIX walks the line between myth and reality, rage and vulnerability, love and annihilation.

This block is fierce, intimate, and shot through with raw emotional voltage. It’s where witches sing before they burn, sons slip into the skin of lost mothers, grief wears unexpected faces, and the end of the world feels like the only time left to speak your truth. Power dynamics crackle—between lovers, cops, parents, and gods. Identity checks become violations. Control slips into chaos. Gender dissolves under the weight of expectation. Love is whispered too late, or shouted too soon. Myth bleeds into memory. The moon is falling. These films don’t soothe or resolve—they expose. They let the silence hang. They let the voice rise.

NEON BLACK is about what burns, what breaks, and what still dares to shine in the dark.

BARLEBAS | 20 Min | Malu Janssen | Netherlands

THE SEA INSIDE HER | 9 Min | Alyx Duncan | New Zealand

GENEALOGY OF VIOLENCE [GÉNÉALOGIE DE LA VIOLENCE] | 15 Min | Mohamed Bourouissa | France

HUN TUN | 15 Min | Magdalena Hejzlarová | Czech Republic

DRESSED TO THE NINES | 6 Min | Madeleine Shenai, Ivana Mazza-Coates | United Kingdom

LAST CIGARETTE | 14 Min | Dario Caamaño | Japan

ROADKILL

COMEDY shnit | INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

COMEDY shnit doesn’t go for the easy laughs.

This block is sharp, chaotic, and just the right amount of unhinged. From cult leaders craving freedom to trans throuples trapped at gender reveal parties, these films expose the weirdness simmering beneath our social rituals—with wit, guts, and zero patience for polite behavior. Expect power games in luxury villas, vintage gore on late-night TV, and a superhero whose downfall might be… hygiene. Whether skewering gender politics, fame, or the soft tyranny of party etiquette, these shorts bring the punchlines with teeth.

Smart, satirical, and delightfully off-kilter, COMEDY shnit isn’t here to play nice. It’s here to mess with expectations—and make you laugh when you probably shouldn’t.

ROADKILL | 27 Min | Louis Gering | Germany

MIDNIGHT FRIGHTS [MINUIT FRISSONS] | 8 Min | Alan Santi, Clotilde Colson | Belgium

MUSCLE MAN IN: METAL MAYHEM [MUSCLE MASQUÉ DANS: FERRAILLE PAGAILLE] | 8 Min | Nicolas Gemoets | Belgium

LEMON [CITROEN] | 19 Min | Bastiaan Rook | Netherlands

GENDER REVEAL | 12 Min | Mo Matton | Canada

DATING A SUSPICIOUS MAN

LOVE shnit | INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

LOVE shnit isn’t about fairy tales.

It’s about love that stings, slips, burns, and sometimes—barely—saves you. These films dive into the murky depths of modern connection, where longing meets survival, and tenderness often wears sharp edges. From cursed exes locked in a magical war to lonely hearts swiping into danger, this block explores love in its strangest, most volatile forms. In dystopian factories where emotion is outlawed, a melody ignites forbidden passion. Elsewhere, motel rooms host quiet collisions between broken souls still aching for something real. There are no perfect matches here. Just desire, desperation, defiance—and moments of raw, fleeting beauty. These are stories of people who reach for love even when it hurts to hold on.

LOVE shnit is for anyone who’s ever wanted too much, trusted too fast, or danced on the edge of ruin with someone who made it all worth it—for a moment.

DATING A SUSPICIOUS MAN | 25 Min | Anna Zaitseva | United States

LUXURY MOTEL [MOTEL DE LUXE] | 15 Min | Jonathan Asselin | Canada

FACTORY DROP | 15 Min | Petja Pulkrabek | Germany

MANDRAGORA | 9 Min | Quentin Martin Laprapde | France

LUCID DREAMING | 13 Min | Emma Evelein | Netherlands

DICKHEADS

PEEPING shnit | INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

PEEPING shnit doesn’t blush.

This 18+ program dives headfirst into desire—messy, mystical, hilarious, and real. These films explore sex not as spectacle, but as transformation: bodies becoming language, fantasies turning into rituals, and pleasure used as both tool and weapon. From cosmic masturbation to queer sex parties, alchemical orgasms to toothbrush tangoes, this block is playful, raw, and defiantly unfiltered. Gender is fluid, consent is sacred, and kink is art.

Expect to be moved—in every sense.

REDDENING | 15 Min | Sinem Kayacan | Finland

JELQING FOR GAINS | 6 Min | T. Arthur Cottam | United States

ORGY EVERY OTHER DAY | 13 Min | Samuel Döring | United States

DICKHEADS [GILIPOLLAS] | 7 Min | Joan Bentallé Pol Diggler | Spain

BRUSH ME | 2 Min | Nikolaus Jantsch | Austria

SUMMER NIGHT’S FANTASY | 5 Min | Guby Moon | Spain

MASKS

SCARY shnit | INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

SCARY shnit slips quietly into your nightmares.

Twisted humor and unsettling imagery blend into something deliciously dark, pulling at the threads of normality until they snap. In these films, everyday comforts twist into grotesque shadows, secrets simmer beneath smiling faces, and reality warps under the weight of hidden fears.

Expect revenge served cold, madness whispered gently, and dread that lurks just beyond view. This is horror with a sly grin and a sharp bite—a playful, eerie invitation to lose yourself in darkness.

THE LEADER WILL COME [DE LEIDER KOMT] | 17 Min | Michiel Geluykens, Manuel Janssens | Belgium

PLAYING GOD | 9 Min | Matteo Burani | Italy

MASKS | 13 Min | Andre LeBlanc | United States

THE MUSICAL SPIDER [DEN MUSIKALISKA SPINDELN] | 11 Min | Henry Moore Selder | Sweden

FREAKS [УРОДЫ] | 23 Min | Alexander Samsonov | Russia

APOTEMNOFILIA | 10 Min | Jano Pita | Spain

HAZEL HOUSE | 2 Min | Charles Dillon Ward | United States

OLDTOWN

MERRY shnit | INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

MERRY shnit doesn’t wear a fake smile.

It finds warmth in strange places—in saunas, parking garages, pharmacies, and deserts. This block celebrates joy that’s a little offbeat, a little bruised, but absolutely alive. These films don’t scream “feel-good.” They whisper it, with weird grace and genuine tenderness. They remind us that happiness doesn’t always make sense—and that’s exactly what makes it real.

MERRY shnit is for anyone who’s ever found magic in the mundane, beauty in the absurd, or light in the most unexpected places.

SNOWBIRD | 25 Min | Patrick Curran | United States

A PLEASURE [PLAZER BAT] | 4 Min | Sonia Estévez | Spain

MADELEINE WATER BOMBS [LES BOMBES A EAU DE MADELEINE] | 5 Min |

Barbara Dupont | France

SAUNA DAY | 13 Min | Anna Hints, Tushar Prakash | Estonia

OLDTOWN | 14 Min | David Vermander | Belgium

SOLARIANS | 20 Min | Clarence Larrivoire | France