From 8 to 12 April the Go Short Industry Program returns with a renewed edition, offering three intensive days designed to inspire, connect, and support filmmakers and industry professionals. Explore the full range of talks, panels, networking moments, and industry events we have in store for you this edition.
Below is an outline of all the activities per day. The full program, including all the speakers and additional registration links for workshops will be available on 6 March.
Nijmegen City Tour
Start your Go Short experience by getting to know Nijmegen. This guided city tour introduces you to the city’s hidden corners, historic streets, and surrounding nature. It’s an ideal moment to meet fellow festival guests, connect with new friends, and ease into the days ahead.
Led by a local guide, the tour offers a relaxed and atmospheric introduction to the oldest city in the Netherlands. Are you staying in a homestay? Feel free to bring your host along for the walk. As we’ll be exploring the city on foot, comfortable shoes are recommended.
Industry Drinks
Every day at 17:00, the Industry Drinks offer a welcoming space to unwind, reflect on the day’s programs, and connect with colleagues from across the international short-film field. Over a drink, you can exchange ideas, strengthen existing relationships, and spark new collaborations.
On Thursday, the Industry Drinks are made possible by Oostpact, while Friday’s drinks are presented by Screen Talent NL and will feature the award ceremony for the Dutch Short Film Pitch, a great opportunity to celebrate emerging voices.
You Made a Short Film – Now What?
Finishing a short film is a milestone, yet for many emerging filmmakers, it also marks the beginning of a new set of questions. This interactive workshop offers a clear-sighted introduction to the short-film ecosystem and helps you navigate the path from completion to reaching the right audience.
During the session, artistic leader of Go Short, Mathieu Janssen, guides participants through the realities of getting your film seen: from shaping a distribution strategy and understanding premiere requirements to navigating submission platforms and collaborating with distributors. He also offers insights into how festivals operate, such as what drives selection committees, how programming choices are made, and how to approach festivals professionally and effectively. So, are you on the precipice of finishing your short? Make sure to join this session and ask all your burning questions.
Production Across Regions
Go Short x Oostpact
What does it take to bring a project to life across different regions, expectations, and creative ambitions? In this panel, four producers come together for a candid conversation about the conditions that shape their work and the choices they face along the way.
The discussion moves between the practical and the imaginative: how do producers recognize when a project’s foundations are solid, what draws them to stories that fall outside standard frameworks, and where is genuine room for unconventional forms?
Collaboration – especially through co-production – emerges as a recurring theme, offering insight into how roles are negotiated and how a project evolves once more partners come on board. Throughout, the panel also turns the lens back to filmmakers: what do they often underestimate about the producer’s process, and what can producers themselves better acknowledge in the filmmaker’s journey.
After the moderated conversation, the audience is invited to join the discussion.
Organized in collaboration with Oostpact
Expand your Regional Network
Meet producers, fund representatives, and industry professionals from Gelderland and beyond in a series of fast-paced one-on-one conversations. These speeddating sessions offer filmmakers a direct and accessible way to introduce their work, ask questions, and make new connections that may spark future collaborations in the region.
Organized in collaboration with Oostpact
Connecting the Crew
How do you keep a film set running smoothly when the pressure is high, the clock is ticking, and every department is juggling its own challenges? Communication sits at the heart of it all. This workshop invites professionals working in a film team to take a closer look at how to make communication clearer, kinder, and far more effective. In an interactive workshop, we explore how information flows during film productions. Alongside the on-set dynamics, we also approach communication as a strategy: how to use it intentionally to streamline production, reduce friction between departments, and keep decisions moving. And because every production lives beyond the set, we look at how to communicate with stakeholders and partners in a way that keeps expectations aligned, trust intact, and collaborations strong from prep to wrap.
Organized in collaboration with New Producers Academy
Festival without Big Tech
How do film festivals balance accessibility with independence when so much of our infrastructure relies on platforms we don't control? This invite-only roundtable brings together festival professionals to discuss the practical realities of reducing dependence on Big Tech. Together, we examine the tools and platforms festivals currently used for ticketing, streaming, audience data, and marketing, and explore what alternatives actually exist. Participants share experiences with decentralized systems, open-source solutions, and community-owned platforms, while discussing the trade-offs between convenience and autonomy.
First Impressions
A strong beginning can shape everything that follows. The opening moments of a film dictate the tone, build expectations, and invite the audience into the world you’ve created. First Impressions offers filmmakers the chance to put that crucial first scene to the test.
In this session, participants screen the opening of their film and receive constructive feedback from an expert panel. Bring your film via Vimeo link or USB and take advantage of this rare opportunity to gather insights before your work heads out into the wider world.
Organized in collaboration with European Short Film Audience Award
New Producers Academy Showcase
A diverse and resilient film industry depends on the perspectives of makers whose voices have too often gone unheard. The New Producers Academy (NPA) supports emerging producers from underrepresented communities through an intensive fellowship program that offers mentorship, training, and the space to develop their creative identities.
At Go Short, three NPA fellows present their latest films and reflect on the process behind them. What drove their ideas, how did they approach production, and have they learned along the way? This showcase offers a rare opportunity to view compelling new work and meet the producers shaping the future of the Dutch film landscape.
Attendance is by invitation only
Breakfast Meetings
Start your morning with coffee, croissants, and conversations. The Breakfast Meetings bring together filmmakers, producers, fund representatives, distributors, and other influential voices from across the international (short-)film landscape.
In a series of informal speeddates, you will have the chance to connect with professionals, and gain insight into how different regions and industries operate. Whether you’re seeking partners for an upcoming project, hoping to expand your international network, or you’re simply curious about who’s shaping the field today, don’t miss this chance to start your Friday off right.
Market screening: International Distributors 1 & 2
This exclusive market screening offers a focused environment for international programmers to discover a curated selection of standout titles from prominent distributors. Designed as a closed, industry-only session, it provides direct access to completed films and works-in-progress with clear festival potential.
Attendance is by invitation only
Korte film sector overleg (Dutch spoken)
In 2026, the Netherlands Film Fund and Go Short are organizing the first-ever Korte Film Sectoroverleg. This session brings together key representatives from across the Dutch short-film field for an open discussion on the state of the sector. In this closed meeting, participants reflect on current developments, address shared challenges, and explore opportunities to strengthen the national infrastructure supporting short-film development, production, and distribution.
Organized in collaboration with the Netherlands Film Fund
Attendance is by invitation only
Spotlight on Genre Storytelling
A new wave of filmmakers is embracing genre as a space for experimentation, blending horror, fantasy, science fiction, and everything in between. These stories invite audiences into imaginative worlds, yet behind the scenes they demand inventive solutions, bold choices, and persistence that can be difficult to sustain when you’re just entering the industry.
In this panel, Go Short brings together a range of perspectives to explore how genre storytelling is being reshaped today. The speakers will discuss what draws them to these narrative forms, how they overcome the practical and creative challenges that come with building worlds from scratch, and which industry conditions allow unconventional ideas to take root.
The discussion also looks outward, examining how the Dutch landscape responds to genre filmmaking and where greater support or flexibility is still needed.
Screenwriters meet Producers
These one-on-one sessions offer Dutch screenwriters the opportunity to sit down with producers and gain insight into how their decision-making process. Rather than focusing solely on pitching, the conversations are designed to help writers understand what producers look for in a project, how to identify the right creative match, and how collaborations can take shape with or without a director attached.
For emerging and established writers alike, it’s a chance to ask questions, compare working methods, and deepen your understanding of the development process from a producer’s point of view. The sessions are open exclusively to writers working in Dutch and made possible by the Lira Fund.
Rebuilding as Worldbuilding with Kara Güt
Video game space as a generative writing tool
How can video game spaces become tools for storytelling and creative writing? In this masterclass, multidisciplinary artist Kara Güt explores how the architecture of games can function as a generative framework for worldbuilding, plotting, and developing dialogue. Using video game environments as a starting point, participants learn how spatial design can act as a set of creative constraints that shape narrative possibilities.
Kara Güt’s practice focuses on digital media and video games, examining human intimacy in virtual worlds where power dynamics shift and internet culture plays a central role. Drawing from her artistic research, she demonstrates how virtual spaces can be used not just as settings, but as active engines for narrative creation and experimentation.
Dutch Short Film Pitch
Discover the next generation of Dutch short films as ten selected projects – five in development and five in production – are presented to an audience of national and international industry professionals. This annual pitch session offers a first look at bold new ideas and emerging voices from across the Netherlands.
Join us to see which projects are poised to make an impact and meet the talent behind them. The participating projects will be announced closer to the festival. The filmmakers compete for several prestigious awards, and the winners will be announced during the Friday Industry Drinks.
Organized in collaboration with Screen Talent NL, QISSA and CineSud
From Short to Feature: Rietland
How does a filmmaker move from the compact intensity of short films to the broader canvas of a feature, while staying true to their creative voice? In this in-depth masterclass, filmmaker Sven Bresser takes participants inside the artistic and practical journey behind his feature debut Rietland (2025), using the session as a live case study for professionals ready to take their next step.
Rietland premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2025 and was selected as the film to represent the Netherlands at the Academy Awards. This masterclass actively discusses the choices, breakthroughs, and challenges that shaped Sven’s path. He will dissect scenes from his own work and share the influences that guided him. The session explores how early short-film success can open doors, the shifting dynamics between short and feature production, and the specific process of working regionally with non-actors and limited means. Throughout, Sven reflects on the creative freedom that emerges when filmmakers trust both their instincts and their environment.
Industry Speeddates
These curated one-on-one meetings connect participants of the Dutch Short Film Pitch and the Producers Campus with key industry professionals. Each session is carefully matched in advance, pairing filmmakers with programmers, distributors, funds, co-producers, or potential directors aligned with their project’s goals.
Attendance is by invitation only
Dutch Short Film Preview
The Dutch Short Film Preview offers international programmers, distributors, and buyers an exclusive first look at a selection of brand-new Dutch short films and works-in-progress, ahead of their official premieres. This private screening provides a concentrated opportunity to discover emerging work and scout for festival line-ups, and engage directly with the filmmakers behind the films.
Attendance is by invitation only; invitees can confirm their participation by responding to their personal invitation.
Scriptwriting Beyond Fiction
In this panel discussion, makers explore how screenwriting functions within documentary and immersive storytelling forms – such as VR, AR, and interactive film – where the script remains essential but takes on a very different shape. Unlike fiction, which often follows a clear structure, these disciplines call for a flexible and investigative approach.
Through a panel conversation with filmmakers and screenwriters, we look at how reality, interaction, and non-linear storylines can be translated into written concepts that still guide and support the creative process. Go Short invites screenwriters and other makers to think beyond traditional narrative boundaries and to engage with emerging forms that reflect today’s artistic and technological possibilities.
Riddle the Short Film Canon
How can the short film canon be reshaped before it becomes fixed? In this keynote, curator and researcher Laura Walde reflects on the canon as a site of power, shaped as much by exclusion and forgetting as by preservation and care. She examines the particular position of short film, which has historically lacked an institutionalized canon, and considers how this absence can function both as a challenge and as an opportunity.
Drawing on her curatorial and academic work, Laura Walde invites the audience to critically engage with the politics of canonization and to collectively imagine ways of keeping the short film canon open, playful, and subject to continual questioning, deconstruction, and reconfiguration.
Organized in collaboration with European Short Film Network
Audience Design for Short Film Projects
A short film's journey doesn't begin at production and it doesn't end at the premiere. Audience design offers filmmakers a creative and strategic framework to think about who their film is for, and how to reach them, from the very first story decisions to the final outreach strategy.
In this presentation, Berlin-based audience strategist Paul Rieth introduces audience design as both a creative and practical tool. Participants learn how to strengthen story development, sharpen their film's positioning, and build communication and outreach strategies that connect with the right audience at the right moment.
Organized in collaboration with Creative Europe Desk NL | Dutch Culture
Food & Chat: Talent Meet
Everyone says your network is essential – and they’re right – but that doesn’t mean traditional networking is easy or enjoyable. Walking into a room of strangers, trying to find the right moment to join a conversation… it can feel daunting.
Food & Chat creates a more relaxed alternative. This informal gathering gives emerging filmmakers a chance to meet peers, exchange ideas, and reflect on their festival experience in a comfortable, low-pressure setting. No stiff introductions, no awkward hovering, just good conversations, shared inspiration, and something tasty to enjoy along the way.
Organized in collaboration with VERS
Audience Design in Practice
Building on the foundations of audience design, this hands-on workshop invites filmmakers to apply the tools directly to their own projects. Working in groups and through open discussions, participants experiment with audience-focused storytelling, positioning, and outreach strategies, gaining practical experience in using audience design to guide their short films beyond the premiere.
Guided by Paul Rieth, this session turns theory into practice and offers a rare opportunity to test ideas in a collaborative and supportive setting.
Registration required; organized in collaboration with Creative Europe Media Desk NL | Dutch Culture
Writer’s Room
The Writer’s Room offers selected Dutch-language writers an intensive trajectory to develop their treatment or script in a focused, supportive environment. Working in a small, carefully curated group, participants collaborate closely with experienced script coach Gwyneth Sleutel to refine story structure, deepen character development, and strengthen the thematic heart of their project. Peer feedback plays an important role throughout the process, creating a space where writers can test ideas, exchange insights, and build confidence in their narrative choices.
For 2026, the Writer’s Room expands to three sessions spread across several weeks: the first during the festival and two follow-up meetings afterwards.
The Writer’s Room is open exclusively to writers working in Dutch and made possible by the Lira Fund. Registrations are open until 20 March. Interested in more screenwriting sessions? Check out the panel discussion Scriptwriting Beyond Fiction on how to write for non-linear work.
Programming Dimensions: Case Studies
Bold programming choices rarely follow a straight line. This session takes you behind the scenes of three distinct and daring programming practices, each challenging what film curation can be and do.
Through in-depth case studies, the invited curators share the full arc of their work: the research, the risks, the institutional pressures, and the moments that made it worthwhile. Expect a candid conversation about work ethics, creative methods, and how programming can be both a political act and a tool for self-discovery.
After Your Big Break
Congratulations! Your film has been selected for a film festival, and maybe even got nominated or awarded. And now what? Alongside the excitement, this moment often brings a wave of new expectations; about your next project, your career trajectory, and the professional steps you’re “supposed” to take.
This panel discussion offers a chance to slow down and reflect on what happens after success. Together with our speakers, we explore how to navigate the festival landscape, manage external pressures, and stay connected to your own creative values. We look at how to define your worth, making choices that serve your long-term practice, and moving forward in a way that feels grounded rather than overwhelming.
Programming Dimensions: Table Talks
In this dynamic session, industry professionals gather around the table for open, moderated conversations on the topics that shape their daily work, from big theoretical questions to pressing practical realities.
Choose three out of six tables and join three rounds of twenty-minute conversations on subjects including: challenging the canon, rethinking festival program structures, accessing the industry, programming vs. curation, the financial reality of programming work, and film programming and well-being.
An open space to exchange ideas, challenge assumptions, and explore the many dimensions of programming work.
Farewell Brunch: A Final Toast
Before we pack our bags and head back to real life, join us for one last brunch. During the Farewell Brunch on Sunday, relive favorite screenings, share final stories, and say goodbye to new festival friends and familiar faces alike.
We’ll toast to the films that surprised us, the conversations that energized us, and the connections that will travel home with us. Until the next film adventure!
