Shorts announced for 2015 Edition of the Berlinale

The short films have been announced for this year's Berlin International Film Festival which runs 5th-15th February. 27 films from 18 countries will be competing for a Golden and a Silver Bear, as well as the nomination for best short film at the European Film Awards and the first-ever EUR 20,000 Audi Short Film Award.

2015 will prove an extra special year for the Berlinale Shorts as it will mark 60 years since a prize for Best Short Film was first handed out at the festival.

Members of the International Short Film Jury are documentary filmmaker and curator Madhusree Dutta, Turkish artist Halil Altındere, and producer and festival director Wahyuni A. Hadi from Singapore.

European films selected include Danish film Pebbles at Your Door, Viebeke Bryld's documentary about a woman in North Korea who begins to realise the lies that surround her. Also screening is German film Dissonance, the latest film from Till Nowak whose film The Centrifuge Brain Project proved one of the most popular on the festival circuit in 2012.

A good showing for German shorts is perhaps indicative of a healthy short film scene in Germany.

“Yet the fact that for a long time now short films have not been limited to 15 minutes, but are on the average 22-minutes long, should - if German cinema is to remain competitive – be taken into account when revising film funding regulations,” says Maike Mia Höhne, curator of Berlinale Shorts. 

European short film fans will also be eagerly anticipating the World Premiere of US film Blood below the Skin from Jennifer Reader whose film A Million Miles Away was one of the most popular shorts of 2014, winning top prizes at Encounters and Winterthur. Her latest film is described as "...a glimpse of the tender and tangled web of love and dependency between a mother and her daughter that goes beyond the traditional allocation of roles."

As the Golden Bear for the Best Short Film will be awarded for the 60th time a special programme, titled The Golden Night of the Short Bears, with a selection of films from 60 years of the Berlinale will be held at the Zoo Palast on Saturday, February 14.

The full list of Berlinale Shorts 2015 is:

Architektura, Ulu Braun, Germany, 15’ (WP)
Bad at Dancing, Joanna Arnow, USA, 11’ (WP)
Blood below the Skin, Jennifer Reeder, USA, 32’ (WP)
Chitrashala (House of Painting), Amit Dutta, India, 19’ (WP)
Däwit (Daewit), David Jansen, Germany, 15’ (WP)
Dissonance, Till Nowak, Germany, 17’ (WP)
Hosanna, Na Young-kil, South Korea, 25’ (DP)
La Isla está Encantada con Ustedes (The Island is Enchanted with You), Alexander Carver & Daniel Schmidt, USA / Switzerland / Australia, 28’ (IP)
El Juego del Escondite (Hide & Seek), David Muñoz, Spain, 23’ (WP)
Kamakshi, Satindar Singh Bedi, India, 25’ (WP)
Lama? (Why?), Nadav Lapid, Israel, 5’ (IP)
Lembusura, Wregas Bhanuteja, Indonesia, 10’ (IP)
Lo Sum Choe Sum (3 Year 3 Month Retreat), Dechen Roder, Bhutan, 20’ (WP)
maku (veil), Yoriko Mizushiri, Japan, 6’ (WP)
The Mad Half Hour, Leonardo Brzezicki, Argentina, 22’ (WP)
Mar de fogo (Sea of Fire), Joel Pizzini, Brazil, 8’ (WP)
Of Stains, Scrap & Tires, Sebastian Brameshuber, Austria / France, 19’ (IP)
Pebbles at Your Door, Vibeke Bryld, Denmark, 18’ (WP)
Planet Ʃ, Momoko Seto, France, 12’ (WP)
San Cristóbal, Omar Zúñiga Hidalgo, Chile, 29’ (WP)
Shadowland, John Skoog, Sweden, 15’ (IP)
Snapshot Mon Amour, Christian Bau, Germany, 6’ (WP)
Superior, Erin Vassilopoulos, USA, 16’ (IP)
Symbolic Threats, Mischa Leinkauf, Matthias Wermke & Lutz Henke, Germany, 16’ (WP)
Take What You Can Carry, Matt Porterfield, USA / Germany, 30’ (WP)
The, Billy Roisz & Dieter Kovačič, Austria, 13’ (WP)
Yúyú, Marc Johnson, France / Spain / USA, 15’ (WP)