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 2022 is now available. Please allow for sufficient lead time when ordering.
You can also rent films from the 2022 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 2022
All 46 new acquisitions from the 2022 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 2022
• German Competition 2022
• MuVi Award 2022
• Art and Experiment 2022
• Award Winner 2022
The curated programme Latin American Perspectives is also new. The films in the programme take a new look at the current social conditions of the continent.
The current programmes are supplemented by the programme Made in Germany 3: Migration, which also includes older titles. In addition, eleven works from the film series Can and Should We Make Films Now?, which were originally published in the festival blog 2020, are still available for distribution. The first two parts of the series Made in Germany and some older programmes from the area of Children's and Youth Film will also remain available.
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
24/05/2023
Ruhr-Universität, Bochum (Hochschulforum „Diversität und Virtualität“)
Punctured Sky, Jon Rafman, USA 2021
The Magical Dimension, Gudrun Krebitz, DEU 2018
Perforated Realities, Gustaf Broms, SWE 2021
backflip, Nikita Diakur, DEU/FRA 2022
27/05/2023
Austrian Film Museum, Vienna
Duhovnye golosa, Alexandr Sokurov, RUS 1995
31/05/2023
Goethe-Zentrum, Tirana (Oberhausen on Tour 2023)
Nur weil du mir deine Wunden zeigst, bist du noch lange nicht mein Heiland (School of Zuversicht), Katharina Duve, DEU 2021
Lovers of all kinds (Lovers of all kinds feat. Jaako Eino Kalevi), Christine Gensheimer, DEU 2022
Dancen, Corina Andrian, ROU 2021
Perforated Realities, Gustaf Broms, SWE 2021
01/06/2023
Lichtburg FIlmpalast, Oberhausen (WAZ-Café)
Eintagsliebe, Florian Kraft, DEU 2000
08/06/2023
International Film Festival Innsbruck
Obitateli, Artavazd Pelešjan, USSR 1970
10/06/2023
International Film Festival Innsbruck
Hong Se Zang Li, Jane Zhang, CHN/MAC 2022
21/06/2023
Sinema Transtopia, Berlin
Shelter, Uma Segal, IND 1983
21/06/2023
City 46, Bremen
I am a Boyband, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay, CAN 2002
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 140 titles are currently available for such rental. All titles available for rental are new purchases from the 2020-2022 festival programmes. The list of film titles will be continuously expanded. Here you will find our new acquisitions from the festival year 2022:
Can and Should We Make Films Now?
The International Short Film Festival Oberhausen invited filmmakers to make short videos responding to the question "Can and should we make films now?". Payment for each production was equivalent to the normal fee for a psychotherapy session in Germany. Producing the videos was thus not allowed to take more than an hour.
"With its commissioned series, Oberhausen has provided compelling proof that filmmaking is exactly the right form of thinking about life and has given the essay a convincing vitality boost. If anything is to remain after Corona, please let it be this thoughtful form of lightnes." (Artechock, Germany, 14 May 2020)
International Competition
Six works from the International Competition and the International Online Competition of the 2022 Festival are presented here. The feature film Boa Noite shows the special relationship between a grandmother and her grandson and how they protect each other from their fears. Matti Harju dispenses with an overarching narrative in Kolme Päivää sadetta when his protagonist, who could be a drug mule, walks aimlessly through the forest. In the computer animation Punctured Sky, an invisible narrator embarks on a journey of discovery to find out why his beloved childhood video game mysteriously disappeared.
The documentary report L'escale shows only one view out of an airplane window and makes clear how closely the privilege of personal freedom is linked to the origin of the travellers documented in the passport. Elodie Pong, on the other hand, documents the Strait of Gibraltar, which has become the preferred route for migrants, as a scene of hope and death. Finally, in Marko Meštrović's animation The Raft, the whole world is flooded, but the band 'Raft' simply continue to play their music on a raft. A selection programme in which the great cinema of the small form is ready to be discovered.
German Competition
Five works from the German Competition 2022 that deal primarily with the topics of work, migration and communication. In her trenchant Muss ja nicht sein, dass es heute ist, Sophia Groening shows the reality of life for young adults in Cologne-Finkenberg in a very unembellished way. Susann Maria Hempel asks herself in Die Hüter des Unrats. Eine kurze Geschichte des Abfalls, what it means for the reconstruction of human history if, thanks to a consistent recycling economy, no more waste is produced in the future. In the documentary Las Flores, Miguel Goya and Tina Wilke follow a group of young migrants in Berlin. Between selfies and fleeting voice messages emerges the fate of a youth who migrated to Europe in search of a better future.
In Gute Arbeit, gute Nacht Michel Wagenschütz portrays an artist who tries to justify her business expenses in telephone conversations with the employment agency. Finally, with Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau and Natalia Escobar, documentary and fiction merge into a transcultural narrative. Aribada meets Las Traviesas, a group of indigenous transwomen of the Embera tribes, in the middle of the Colombian coffee region. The magical, the dreamlike and the performative coexist in this unique world. ARIBADA was awarded the 3sat Emerging Talent Prize.
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 short film genre that even managed to survive the decline of its midwife, music television. This programme gathers together all works nominated for the 2022 MuVi Award, supplemented by one artistically outstanding video from the MuVi International programme.
The first prize went to Julia Crescitelli for Flourish, in which everyday gestures flow into each other at breakneck speed – a highly idiosyncratic and lively work that propagates an aesthetic beyond the beautiful and the ugly. In Mariola Brillowska's Wann hast du das letzte Mal Blumen betrachtet, awarded 2nd prize, the images glide between organic and inorganic worlds, between flowers, spiders and other strange forms of life. The MuVi Audience Award went to Michael Ullrich for his behind-the-scenes collage Dr. No.
Art and Experiment
This year’s Artist and Experiment programme assembles some of the most intriguing filmmakers who are currently working in the field of tension between film and art. At the beginning, Gustaf Broms asks in Perforated Realities how the Covid-19 virus could shake the foundation of an idea of civilisation. Katrin Winkler uses private footage of missionaries who accompanied colonisations in Africa to address the question of how the colouring came about and how it is shaped by power structures through different colonising actors.
It grew fur again, lost it, developed scales, lost them by Gitte Villesen is an essay film that explores two ideas that emerged from two works of feminist science fiction. In Grandma's Scissors, filmmaker Erica Sheu connects with her grandmother and her grandmother's craft through her own. Finally, the dance film Dancen, shot in Wuppertal (Germany), looks at the fleeting impulses that live between individual moments of the day. The films in this programme provide an illuminating insight into the current state of media art.
Award Winner
This programme includes many important award winners from the two International and German Competitions of the 2022 Festival. The selection is opened by Meshy Koplevitch's 73, which, in a mixture of memory, history and personal reflection, shows a young woman recounting her father's experiences during the Yom Kippur War. The filmmaker uses watercolours to reconstruct memories of her father. In YON, an unembellished version of one's own family and childhood is told, taking a completely unsentimental look at home movies.
Weathering Heights overcomes the notion that there is a difference between science fiction and our lived reality by condensing the difficulty of communication in a world still suffering from the effects of a global pandemic. The film was awarded the Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen. Feriado by Azucena Losana creates a hypnotic world that artistically challenges common narratives. Alexandra Gulea's ŃEALE AZBUIRĂTOARE, awarded the Prize oft he German Competition, interweaves visual and acoustic material to create a multi-layered narrative about a nomadic minority that becomes the plaything of surrounding powers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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".