The distribution of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen is based on one of the oldest and most important short film collections worldwide. Every year the Festival purchases around 50 new works from the current festival programme, plus numerous titles from our archive.
Overview
Our distribution is international and non-commercial. You can borrow individual titles, programmes prepared by us or programmes you have put together yourself. We are happy to help you with the compilation. If you would like to show short films as supporting films, we have compiled a suitable selection, for which we offer special conditions. Our complete distribution programme 2023 is now available. Please allow for sufficient lead time when ordering.
You can also rent films from the 2023 distribution programme for online use as well.
Under Film Search you can browse our distribution stock from 2000 to the present, create film lists and place orders. If you are interested in older titles, please contact us. Older works from the collection can only be lent if the necessary rights have been cleared, the condition of the copies allows it and we know the location of the original materials.
Our distribution programme 2023
All 42 new acquisitions from the 2023 festival are available for on-site screenings and in many cases for online screenings as well. We have also expanded our list of titles that are particularly suitable as supporting films.
We have already compiled some selection programmes from the competitions of the last festival for you
• International Competition 2023
• German Competition 2023
• MuVi Award 2023
• Art and Experiment 2023
• Award Winner 2023
Also new is the programme Comforting and Defying for children aged 12 and older.
The current programmes are supplemented by the programmes Latin American Perspectives and Made in Germany 3: Migration, which also includes older titles. The first two parts of the series Made in Germany and some older programmes from the field of Children's and Youth Film will also remain available.
Terms and Conditions
Fees per screening from distribution list (films from 2000-2023) for on-site and online screenings:
Programme up to 80 min. | € 180 |
Programme up to 100 min. | € 200 |
Programme MuVi Prize | € 150 |
Programme Children's cinema | € 150 |
per title up to 20 min. | € 40 |
per title over 20 min. | € 60 |
*An additional 50% will be charged for archive films (before 2000).
A copy processing fee of € 10 will be charged for individual films and existing programmes, and € 20 for newly curated programmes, along with transport costs and 7% VAT where applicable.
In the case of regular loans of short films as supporting films, we give the following discount:
10 short films (one screening each) | € 220 |
20 short films (one screening each) | € 350 |
No copy-processing fees are charged for the regular, discounted loan of single films.
The proceeds from online distribution go almost entirely to the rights holders of the rented works.
Oberhausen on Tour
This year, for the thirteenth time, the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen is sending films from its festival programmes on a worldwide tour. The project will focus on compilations and films from the 2022 festival programme, for example selections of award winners or from the various competitions. Thematic programmes such as "Made in Germany" or "Latin American Perspectives" as well as older and new children's and youth film programmes complement the programme.
Cinemas, museums and galleries, festivals or Goethe Institutes around the world show the films as partners of "Oberhausen on Tour". They benefit from reduced rental fees as well as from exclusive promotional materials such as the specially produced cinema trailer for "Oberhausen on Tour 2023” (director, editor and sound designer: Christian Schön).
The first stops in 2023 are Cologne, Heidelberg, Potsdam, Tirana, Toronto and Tampere. Around 40 venues will be taking part until the end of the year, from Europe and North America to New Zealand and South America.
Dates
05/09/2024
Lichtburg, Oberhausen (WAZ Kino-Café)
DESIGN BIO TOILET, Mariola Brillowska, DEU 2024
10/09/2024
Romanfabrik, Frankfurt/Main
Vertical Distraction, Dennis Feser, DEU 2010
11/09/2024
25/09/2024
City 46, Bremen
Every Sunday, GrandMa, Laure Prouvost, FRA/BEL 2022
25/09/2024
Pop-Up Stage Altmarkt, Oberhausen
Krot na more, Anna Kadykova, RUS 2012
Die klaffende Wunde, Jovana Reisinger, DEU 2020
Das satanische Dickicht - DREI, Willy Hans, DEU 2017
Die Zeit heilt alle Wunder (Wir sind Helden), Cornelia Cornelsen, DEU 2004
Sommerhitze, Katja Fredriksen, DEU 2003
Muss ja nicht sein, dass es heute ist, Sophia Groening, DEU 2021
The Centrifuge Brain Project (deutsche Fassung mit Voice Over), Till Nowak, DEU 2011
Tour Eifel, Christian Mrasek/Rainer Knepperges, DEU 2000
Kein Platz für Gerold, Daniel Nocke, DEU 2006
Contact
Carsten Spicher
spicher(at)kurzfilmtage.de
Current Offer
New Purchases A–Z
Supporting films A-Z
In addition to the full-length short film programmes, you can also schedule single short films as supporting films and hire them from us. We have compiled a selection of works suitable for supporting film from the distribution acquisitions of the last five years.
Moreover, all those who wish to regularly rent supporting films are entitled to our new quantity discount. For example, we offer the rental of ten short films per year (with one screening each) for 220 euros, 20 short films per year (with one screening each) can be rented for 350 euros (in each case plus transport + 7% tax if applicable). The German Federal Film Board (FFA) has also been encouraging the screening of short films as supporting films in Germany for several years with a subsidy of up to 80% of the verified costs for film rentals, advertising and transport.
Films Online
Since December 2020 you can also rent short films from us for online playback on VoD platforms. The following must be ensured: the films will be published for film-historical and media-related purposes exclusively in streaming mode (no download) and only in the non-commercial context of a presentation of the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen. The films may not be put online for longer than 48 hours per release. The VoD platform may only be accessible to registered users.
Almost 170 titles are currently available for such rental. All titles available for rental are new purchases from the 2020-2023 festival programmes. The list of film titles will be continuously expanded. Here you will find our new acquisitions from the festival year 2023:
International Competition
Five works from the International Competition 2023: First, Eero Tammi’s History presents a picture of the history of the universe from the perspective of a lonely person who spends a birthday looking at old slides of films. Dohvatiti sunce: El Shatt focuses on historical facts about the El Shatt refugee camp in the Sinai desert during World War II. It is based on archive material and links it to images of this desert non-place. Gankyu no Hito is an experimental film about glances and farewells. Yuri Muraoka interweaves images with words and a poem with images.
In Bildwerden, Christiana Perschon portrays the 90-year-old painter Isolde Maria Joham in strictly framed sections. This results in surprising correspondences between the artist and her work. Finally, in the feature film 2720 by Basil da Cunha, a young girl searches for her missing older brother after a violent police raid in a poor neighbourhood in Lisbon. At the same time, a young ex-convict tries to make a new start free from a life of crime. The camera follows the two as they make their way through the neighbourhood and discovers an extremely vibrant community.
MuVi-Award
In 1999, Oberhausen introduced the world’s first festival prize for music videos. Music videos had increasingly managed to emancipate themselves from their purely illustrative and advertising function, transforming themselves into a completely independent visual form. Today, music videos have proven themselves to be an independent form of short film that even managed to survive the decline of its midwife, music television. This programme gathers together all works nominated for the 2023 MuVi Award, supplemented by one artistically outstanding video from the MuVi International programme.
Gravity by Duc-Thi Bui, awarded 1st prize, perfectly combines the rhythms of music and text and creates a cinema all of its own without visual landscapes. The 2nd prize went to the chamber play Das eigensinnige Kind by Schorsch Kamerun, which takes us on a mysterious journey into the life of the protagonist, portraying how alone one can be in this society. The MuVi Audience Award went to Julian Paul’s Maschinenbauergemetzel, an equally unsparing and hilarious reckoning with the patriarchy.
Art and Experiment
This year’s Art and Experiment programme assembles some of the most intriguing filmmakers who are currently working in the field of tension between film and art. In Mourning Stage, a series of drawings depicts different renditions of the devil in hell and feminized characters. Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau interacts with the drawings, using her body and facial expressions to create a ritualistic performance. Xiuhtecuhtli by Colectivo Los Ingrávidos shows a rhythmic evocation of primalfire, in which dazzling flames reanimate bones and natural elements.
Noita miettien by Mox Mäkelä is a rant on the world of consumption, a waterfall of words with leaps of thought and word inventions. In BéGouf Rishon by Dan Robert Lahiani, the filmmaker’s personal search for connection, home and healing becomes entangled with the fears, pains and neglect of a dilapidated and crumbling building. Finally, Swerve by Lynne Sachs shows five New York City performers searching for a meal in a Queens market while speaking in verse. The film itself transforms into a meditation on writing and making images in the liminal space between a global pandemic and what might come next.
Award Winner
This programme contains almost all the major award winners of the 2023 Festival. In the documentary Chornobyl 22, Oleksiy Radynski links secret mobile phone footage of the Russian conquest of the area around Chernobyl with experiences of employees of the power plant during the takeover of their workplace by the Russian military. The film was awarded the Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen. Based on personal memories and individual experiences, Turtleneck Phantasies by Gernot Wieland weaves complex narratives into a portrait of society, showing memories of suppressed, unheard and forgotten voices.
In Let's Be Friends by Arno Coenen and Rodger Werkhoven, we see and hear synthetic actors talk about “AI acting” and respond to fears of losing artistic influence because of emerging AI technologies. Finally, the documentary Camino de lava portrays Afrofeminist and queer activist Afibola. Afibola tries to teach their son Olorun how to be a free, Afro-Cuban man despite the obstacles surrounding them. In the intimacy of their own home, Afibola reflects on the difficulty of raising a black child in a racist and discriminatory society.
Latin American Perspectives
New productions from Latin America have recently been strongly represented at Oberhausen. This selection takes a new look at the current political and social conditions on the continent. It starts with Solidariedade, in which images of a protest rally against the Bolsonaro government make visible gestures of resistance and oppression, but also of joy. Cadê Heleny? rewinds the story of the philosopher and theatre director Heleny Guariba, who disappeared under the dictatorship in Brazil in 1971, through embroidered and animated memories of her relatives. MONOLOGO DE UN SICARIO shows the contract killer in the world of Colombianisation as the lowest level on which an entire criminal structure is based.
In 1982 the indigenous Zoque community was forced to relocate due to a volcanic eruption. ( ( ( ( ( /*\ ) ) ) ) ) ) is the portrait of a village in Chiapas, Mexico, its culture, sounds and architecture. The film documents the modern challenges and world view of a community that is also under political pressure to preserve its land and rights. Indigenous culture also plays an important role in the feature film O Jardim Fantástico. Here, following an old tradition, a teacher administers ayahuasca in her classroom to make her students aware of other levels of reality.
Made in Germany 3– Migration
This compilation, the third part of our series with the best German short films of the last ten years, deals with the living conditions of migrants in Germany today. In 1984 six Turkish citizens died in Duisburg-Wanheimerort in an arson attack. While the police quickly ruled out a racist background, from today's point of view there is a lot of circumstantial evidence to prove it. Dunkelfeld goes in search of clues and reopens the case. In the animation Brand, an East German mayor and his family are met with a wave of hatred when he agrees to take in refugees. The essay film ma nouvelle vie européenne reflects on Europe's invisible borders from the perspective of Abou, a Malian refugee in Germany, making the camera a medium of self-empowerment.
In Three Notes, Jeannette Gaussi artistically processes the few remaining photographs of her Afghan childhood. The playful Moruk shows the introverted Hakan and the fun-loving Murat hanging out in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood. They meet daily, smoke pot, dream, philosophize and argue. Tiefenschärfe finally reads in the markings of the places in Nuremberg where the so-called NSU committed three murders. Here the pen becomes the camera and the camera becomes the actor while the film traces the unsettling impact of these attacks on society.
Comfort and Defiance
With imagination and the necessary portion of courage, the young people in this programme try to meet their growing bodies and needs, the changes taking place and the reactions of their environment. This programme tells of the first rituals of masculinity as well as of dealing with chronic illnesses, the arrival of the period or the special feeling of doing something for the first time. A programme full of defiance and comfort – for everyone from the age of 12 for whom giving up and giving in are no options.
Made in Germany
In German short film there is a great deal of formal differentiation, at a high level. Despite all these differences, however, we can see that German short films - whether fiction or documentary, experimental or hybrid - are concerned with what is happening or important in our country. Family, homeland, migration, language, often political issues - the films take up their themes in a very personal way, analyse, illuminate marginal aspects and details, reveal unexpected connections, demand attention.
The three parts of the series "Made in Germany" published so far present those German short films of the last ten years that were not only prize winners or festival favourites in Oberhausen, but were also extremely successful and received important awards elsewhere, often beyond our national borders. Some of these works have been shown at more than 200 festivals worldwide, while others have already received the German Short Film Award in Gold. These films are not calling cards for upcoming feature film projects, they stand as artistic productions, as positions, for themselves.
Made in Germany 1 – A New Home
This compilation is the first part of a series with the best German short films from the past 10 years. The films in the programme take a fresh look at family and home in Germany. While Helena Wittmann’s camera slowly surveys living rooms, her protagonists hardly ever leave their home. Demons lurk everywhere. This is also the case with Bjørn Melhus, who cleverly interrogates the way a society that is waging war treats its veterans. Susann Maria Hempel on the other hand recalls with unerring acuity an experience unique to East Germany after 1989, portrayed as an exploded doll’s house. The associative animation “Däwit”, which has already been shown at more than 200 festivals, relates how a boy is forced to grow up among wolves. And at the end, Eva Könnemann tries to capture a rural village at the edge of the Ruhr area on camera, with the lack of production means leading her to develop an innovative artistic form and working method. All these works were not only festival favourites in Oberhausen; they also won important awards at many other festivals or received the German Short Film Award in Gold.
Made in Germany 2 – Inner City Life
“Made in Germany 2: Inner City Life” the second part of our series with the best German short films of the past ten years, takes a fresh look at the city and its architecture. At the centre of this programme is the winner of the 2015 German competition, “Shift”, which weaves together the director’s personal family history with a portrait of the city of Salzgitter. The film combines analysis and imagination as it follows the stream of revealed histories. Kerstin Honeit invites construction workers to a coffee party among the skeleton construction work of the Berlin City Palace for a grotesque staging of the demolition and reconstruction of nationalistic myths. Marian Mayland, on the other hand, recalls a demolished apartment block in Manchester by furiously combining documentary material with excerpts from cultural counterprojects of the early techno and acid house scene. And Maximilian Villwock shows us how love in nocturnal Berlin turns into a power struggle when the ego takes the upper hand. Finally, “Please Say Something” animates the city in a way you have never seen and sets off an enigmatic and futuristic fireworks display of images about the relationship between a cat and a mouse in the internet era. All these works were festival favourites in Oberhausen and elsewhere.
Made in Germany 3 – Migration
This compilation, the third part of our series with the best German short films of the last ten years, deals with the living conditions of migrants in Germany today. In 1984 six Turkish citizens died in Duisburg-Wanheimerort in an arson attack. While the police quickly ruled out a racist background, from today's point of view there is a lot of circumstantial evidence to prove it. Dunkelfeld goes in search of clues and reopens the case. In the animation Brand, an East German mayor and his family are met with a wave of hatred when he agrees to take in refugees. The essay film ma nouvelle vie européenne reflects on Europe's invisible borders from the perspective of Abou, a Malian refugee in Germany, making the camera a medium of self-empowerment.
In Three Notes, Jeannette Gaussi artistically processes the few remaining photographs of her Afghan childhood. The playful Moruk shows the introverted Hakan and the fun-loving Murat hanging out in the Kreuzberg neighbourhood. They meet daily, smoke pot, dream, philosophize and argue. Tiefenschärfe finally reads in the markings of the places in Nuremberg where the so-called NSU committed three murders. Here the pen becomes the camera and the camera becomes the actor while the film traces the unsettling impact of these attacks on society.
Children's and Youth Film
We also have both individual films and ready-made programmes for hire that are suiteable for children and young people. Here you will find some links to ready-made programmes. You are also welcome to let us put together an indivdual programme for you. Please contact us with any questions you may have.
Comforting and Defiance
With imagination and the necessary portion of courage, the young people in this programme try to meet their growing bodies and needs, the changes taking place and the reactions of their environment. This programme tells of the first rituals of masculinity as well as of dealing with chronic illnesses, the arrival of the period or the special feeling of doing something for the first time. A programme full of defiance and comfort – for everyone from the age of 12 for whom giving up and giving in are no options.
Finding Ways (Children's Cinema)
A programme for children from the age of three. Here, the smallest viewers see the world, which often seems so big and confusing, reflected in a playful way. The protagonists of the films have to find their own solutions to everyday obstacles, overcome fears and learn new things.
We take a cinematic journey to five-year-old Junu in Nepal, cheer canary Kiki on her way to freedom and while fishing with a little cat, we find out that friends make life more beautiful. A music video explores the jungle in gaudy tones. With each of the five films, the audience’s eyes and ears are encouraged to open – to the quiet and loud moments of this programme, which is ideal for a first film and cinema experience.
Making discoveries
Here, we experience childhood as a time of experiment, exuberant fantasy and pleasure, a time when we gather experiences and get to know ourselves better. But childhood is also a time when taking decisions is an act fraught with obstacles and hindrances that are not always unconnected with serious issues and sad experiences.
This programme invites children and adults to go on a journey through this diversity. It tells of a lethargic summer afternoon or the loss of a loved one, of climate change or the exciting feeling when one overcomes fear to soar to new heights. A programme for children of 8 and over in which several young people set out to make fresh discoveries.
Doing the right thing
A multi-faceted programme that highlights a phase in life when you are clearly still a child, but old enough to be confronted with choices and problems. A programme full of remarkable young people on their way to adulthood.
Available only in Germany, Austria and Switzerland as DCP, Blu-Ray and DVD.
Vera Neubauer: "The fire red play mobile" and more
The Czechoslovak-born filmmaker Vera Neubauer animated six short films in the early 1970s. Five episodes around the friends Pip and Bessie were rediscovered and restored. The programme also includes her later Woolly films, in which everything is made of wool. Annie and her world were created with the knitting needle. A short film programme without dialogues.
Stories without words
Without words but with clear messages, the programme convinces with its variety of topics - be it family or friendship. Exciting and instructive, it is ideal for a teaching unit and is also easy to understand for viewers with little or no knowledge of the German language.
Film Search
Here you can browse our distribution stock from 2000 to the present, create film lists and place orders. If you are interested in older titles, please comtact us. For more information, see "Distribution programme" and "Terms and Conditions".