Opening this weekend, 17th January, the London Short Film Festival (LSFF) returns for its 22nd edition to celebrate emerging filmmakers and the art of short film-making. The eclectic programme will run across London’s most iconic screens and venues, including the BFI Southbank, ICA, Curzon Soho, Rio Cinema, and Rich Mix, and a free 1960s Mobile Cinema Bus roaming around the city.
Continuing its legacy as the UK’s leading short film festival, LSFF once again brings together the best of independent, boundary-pushing short films and new voices in cinema from around the globe. This year’s festival theme, Spaces, will explore the creative, social, and political landscapes of the spaces we inhabit and the cost of their loss – from cinemas and social hubs to the elusive third spaces, those vital gathering spots that define our collective experience and foster community.
Curated by cinematic and cultural tastemakers across disciplines, the Events programme brings prescient discussions to the foreground through moving image works from across the globe and the history of cinema. Screenings underscoring London’s urgent crises of rising gentrification and so-called “regeneration”, a severe shortage of affordable housing in a rapidly expanding city (Housing Problems by Ed Webb-Ingall & Oliver Dixon) and powerful expressions of Black and queer cultures from Waywaad Collective’s Always Been Here, and Lauren Gee’s Everywhere We Are Islands, focused on new voices in Caribbean filmmaking.
Young cinema-goers can discover Soviet Children’s Animation and family-friendly films from Offbeat Film Club. Expect out-of-this-world screenings in the rarely seen early comedy shorts of TV Burp icon Harry Hill in Holidays on Mars; and curated by Nelly Ben-Hayoun: Alien Extravaganza: a queer, colourful, experimental galaxy of new short-filmmaking.
Representing the taboo on-screen erotica, the team behind Sinéad O’Dwyer’s infamous London Fashion Week presentation, Lover Management, present their own debauched evening film programme, Dark Fantasies. Action-loving collective Babes with Blades present a celebration of badass women in the action genre (as part of the nationwide BFI Art of Action season.) Film critic Cici Peng presents Pop: Contagion, Infection, Revolution! – exploring Pop’s influence on counter-culture, featuring global experimental moving-image works from 1968 to the present day, followed by a pop party hosted at the ICA.
Full LSFF 2025 programme HERE
About
The London Short Film Festival (LSFF) is the UK’s leading short film festival, now in its 22nd year and a BAFTA and BIFA qualifying, internationally-regarded independent festival. Each January, LSFF hosts ten days of short films, live events, Q&As and multidisciplinary curation. The festival presents between 250-500 British and international films each edition, collaboratively programmed down from 6000+ open submissions, alongside Special Events and an Industry programme of workshops, panels and discussion for filmmakers and workers.
LSFF exists to spotlight a multiplicity of filmmakers, visual artists and creatives, across intersections and with a commitment to peripheral voices. The festival is proud of its 22-year ethos of giving screen space and visibility to unconventional and thoroughly independent filmmaking, and seeks to situate the contemporary in dialogue with history and the world at large. LSFF is a platform where filmmakers can cut their teeth and define their careers, and a celebration of the archival treasures and talent that came before. @londonshortfilmfest
