How do filmmakers tell a story in under six minutes?

Find out at the 17th annual Short Short Story Film Festival.

About the Festival

The Short Short Story Film Festival is a competitive international festival of films that tell a story in under six minutes, celebrating brevity in filmmaking with both live-action and animated films.

The festival consists of two programs, Heartstrings and Headtrip, each with a distinctive tone yet wide-ranging styles and topics, and including both live-action and animated films.

New for the Festival for 2024

The 17th edition of the festival returned to celebrate brevity in film-making in a brand new way, running from Saturday, 23rd November through Sunday, 8th December.

For 2024, festival was a unique closed event, with film makers across the globe participating in both exhibiting and reviewing films.

A panel of Spoiler Alert Radio interviewees judged the films and selected the best in each program as well.

Click here to see a list of jury members.

Festival Awards

For the Heartsrings program, the winner was Colourful White, an animated documentary about the life experiences of people with vitiligo, created by Jiahao Li, with Yuwei Jiang and Jan Zhou.

For the Headtrip program, the winner was La Próxima Vez (The Next Time), directed by Julián Lona, a portrayal of a son's attempts to establish better communication with his mother over Sunday lunch.

Commissioned custom art objects created by past festival winners will be presented to the winners.

2024 Film Selections

For the 17th edition, we accepted 18 films, from more than a dozen countries, all of which were US or World premieres. These were culled from several hundred submissions from more than forty countries.

Click here to see a list of festival films.

Two programs, Heartstrings and Headtrip, both showcased films tightly sequenced in under eighty minutes total, each with a distinctive tone yet wide-ranging styles and topics.

Festival History

The festival has taken place every November since 2007 (except for a Covid hiatus in 2020), in cities and towns throughout the northeastern United States.

To learn more about the festival concept and history, click here.

For requirements to submit to future editions, click here.

There is no fee to submit your film to the festival.