What is Go Short

Go Short is the main short film festival in the Netherlands. The 15th edition of Go Short took place 31 March-10 April 2023. During the festival days, Europe’s best and freshest short films were screened and handed out Go Short Awards for the best of the best. Aside from the competitions, Go Short offered an extensive program of events, talks, educational activities, workshops, parties and meeting points for filmmakers, the audience and other stakeholders.

Goals

The Go Short foundation aims to contribute to deepening and expanding the short film culture by organizing an annual international film festival for short films.

Go Short is founded on the principles of the Cultural Governance Code and consists of a board and a director. The foundation has been registered as a charitable institution (ANBI in Dutch).

What’s a short film?

Our definition of a short film, is that it’s no longer than 30 minutes. The medium short film makes an important contribution to the development of fiction, documentary, animation and art films. Through this, the short film also stimulates the entire film industry.

Film talent

Go Short supports short film talent as much as possible. In competitions, on campus and through the many organized meetings: Go Short is an international hotbed for creatives.

Filmmakers and young talent are important to Go Short. Their innovative films make the festival interesting for the visitors and for the high amount of (international) professional guests.

Our visitors

Our film programs are for the young and elderly, but with 75% of our visitors being younger than the age of 35, we attract a dynamic mix of young visitors, many of whom are from the region of Nijmegen. However, we’re a renowned authority in the international film industry, which is why we also accommodate a huge amount of international visitors: film geeks from all over the world travel far and wide to pay us a visit. Finally, we have a large online community with a broad reach on our social media channels and the blog.

ANBI

The tax authorities (in Dutch: de Belastingdienst) have recognized Go Short as a cultural charitable institution (ANBI). This means the all donations to Go Short are tax deductible.

More information about this can be found on the Belastingdienst website.

As part of the ANBI regulations Go Short shows insight into its financial situation. See our Annual Report 2017-2018.

Background and positioning

Since the arrival of cinema at the beginning of the 20th century, upcoming filmmakers have been using shorts as a form of expression. Established filmmakers have been using them as showcases.

For decennia, shorts have been the exquisite medium for makers to experiment on a content, narrative, technical and productional level. The developments and experiments that happened in these short films, have also been leading in exhibition and distribution.

The amount of makers that are using this art form is growing. This increase in popularity can be traced back to the worldwide development of digitization and democratization of media. The recent integration and increase of media in our daily lives has lead to the growth of short films.

The great amount of short films on the internet already attests to the interest in this medium. At the same time, there is a vagueness when it comes to selection: it’s lacking guidance. Since 2009, Go Short – the only festival exclusively for short films in the Netherlands – have been gatekeepers and thus we’ve been able to provide this crucial need for guidance.

RSIN
819691951

Previous editions