International Short Film Festival Oberhausen

The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen is one of the most important short film institutions worldwide and renowned for its focus on experimental and avant-garde work. Oberhausen has presented early works by filmmakers such as George Lucas or Martin Scorsese, but also by artists such as Christian Boltanski, Pipilotti Rist, Laure Prouvost or Eija-Liisa Ahtila, to name just a few.

The oldest short film festival in the world screens approximately 500 films annually and welcomes over 1,000 accredited professionals on average. Important aesthetic developments were initiated by the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, such as the Oberhausen Manifesto, which paved the way for a new generation of German filmmakers including Rainer Werner Fassbinder or Werner Herzog. Since 2015, Oberhausen has also awarded the annual e-flux Prize “for an exceptional film and video work which reshapes the poetic and electric potential of moving images in the age of planetary circulation of information”.

Among the artists showcased most recently at Oberhausen were Sally Tykkä, Marie Lukáčová and Baloji in2021, Susannah Gent and Maya Schweizer in 2020, Alexander Sokurov in 2019, Khavn de la Cruz and Bjørn Melhus in 2017 or Jeanne Faust and Sun Xun in 2016.