The 45th Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival – the largest short film festival in the world – will be held from 27th January through 4th February 2023.

Three competitions bring together the short films selected this year from over 8,300 entries spanning the entire world, including some 2,000 just from France. 

Seventy-eight films from fifty-two countries will be shown in the International Competition.

The Lab Competition will host twenty-five films from twenty-three countries.

And fifty-six French films, including ten international co-productions, make up the National Competition.

In conjunction with the Festival, the 38th Short Film Market, a stand-out, one-of-a-kind gathering, will be held from 30th January through 3rd February 2023.

INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION

The International Competition is a space where the different approaches that make up the richness of global short film meet and mingle. In 2023, short films ranging from three to thirty-three minutes in length offer us a look at dozens of stories, hundreds of lives, both real and fictional, from the fifty-two countries represented. Beyond escapism and culture-shock, there is a lot of emphasis on returning and finding again, sprinkled with one indispensable ingredient for any good selection: love stories beyond borders.

78 films selected from 52 countries among 6353 inscriptions.

• 61 fiction films
• 9 documentary films
• 8 animated films
• 16 coproductions

NATIONAL COMPETITION

This year, the National Competition offers fifty-six films that will take us far far away from the daily grind, from Manila to Boston with stops in Bogotá, London and even… the cosmos! The journey will be both dense and internal; we’ll meet many people searching for meaning at critical moments of their existence, and at the end of the day, outcasts will have their say.

• 56 films selected among 1967
• 53 fiction films, including 7 animated films
• 3 documentary films
• 10 international coproductions
• 26 first films

LAB COMPETITION

The Lab Competition, where we jostle to discover explosive works that offer new forms of narration. We explore the paradox of total darkness from the lights of Tokyo to the jungles of Borneo and its ancestral creatures, with a stop in the depths of the dark web. 

• 25 films selected

• 23 countries
• 10 documentary films
• 7 fiction films
• 5 animated films

MEETINGS WITH DIRECTORS

The festival offers to meet and discuss with some directors for special shared moments.

OPEN MIC SESSIONS

Those special sessions consist of a screening followed by a shared moment with the directors.

The open mic sessions will be held from Sunday 29 to Saturday 4 in the Salle des Possibles for every national, international and lab sessions.

More information here.

A CONVERSATION WITH SALLY POTTER

The British director, who has over forty international awards to her name, will honor us by participating in a public engagement, in French, with audience members in Clermont-Ferrand.

The talk will take place the day after the screening of her latest short film Look At Me (with Javier Bardem and Chris Rock), specially included as a part of the Festival’s opening ceremonies.

The Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival is the most important short film event in the world. Put together by the organization Sauve qui peut le court métrage, the 45th Festival (and its corresponding short film market) will be held from 27 January to 4 February 2023. Come and discover masterpieces of animation, comedies, films on contemporary reality, genre films, student projects from the best schools in the world, and documentaries from across the globe.

Short films will once again be shown in all their splendor and diversity in Auvergne in the dead of winter.