London Short Film Festival

The London Short Film Festival returns for its 23rd year. Taking place at venues across London, this year the BFI Southbank hosts a variety of short film screenings as part of the festival.

Delivering the very best in new short-form filmmaking as well as retrospectives, the festival programme includes themed programme evenings and themed short film competition programmes.

Short film screenings taking place at the BFI Southbank include:

Sat 24 Jan at 6:20pm
My Eye Is My Ear + Q&A
A long-standing highlight for Deaf audiences at LSFF, My Eye Is My Ear presents a selection of new UK short films exploring Deaf lives, culture and identity. From drama and comedy to romance, these films feature Deaf characters and capture the humour, emotion and uniqueness of experiences within the Deaf community.

Sat 24 Jan at 8:40pm
British Lives + Q&A
What does it mean to be British today? This collection of shorts presents a multifaceted look at contemporary British cultural identity, bringing together drama, documentary and animation to reflect the many stories that shape the nation - from the eccentricities of a small Scottish town to the Cornish coastal south-west.

Sun 25 Jan at 6:20pm
Everybody’s Darling: Melodrama in 80s & 90s Punk Cinema
Short films from the underground where glamour, obsession and melodrama take centre stage. Platforming women and queer artistes, this programme investigates the legacy of Warhol’s ‘superstars’, John Waters’ trash cinema and the Cinema of Transgression by looking at subsequent work that has drawn on the punk elements of those earlier cinematic movements to create passionate, lo-fi paeans to melodrama.

Mon 26 Jan at 8:40pm
UK Competition: Drifting Towards Dreamsource (+ filmmakers Q&A)
A selection of UK Competition films charting restless searches for truth, for belonging, for connection. A voice is lost and remade. A man finds himself stranded among mystics and emus. A filmmaker drifts dreamily between screenings. Another navigates the opacity of digital-age communication, and one meditates on the loss and reclamation of Black community. Elsewhere, a boy's wonder at the solar system collides with online skepticism.

Tue 27 Jan at 8:45pm
UK Competition: Memories of the Earth (+ filmmakers Q&A)
In this UK Competition selection, the land hums with recollections of the soil and water, its transience and traditions. Childhood rituals crack open old traumas. Diasporic currents flow between Jamaican and British rivers. An overturned car transforms into myth. A mining operation bows to a monstrous creature. Office walls echo with misogynoir. And a man pursues a horse's skull to fulfil an ancient folk rite.

Sat 31 Jan at 12pm
Am I Still Young? Can I Dream A Few Months More? (+ filmmakers Q&A)
Caught between teenage dreams and harsh truths, family bonds and wild rebellion, these films draw from stories across the globe to explore what it truly means to come of age in the here and now.