About Betting on Shorts

‘Betting on Shorts’ (BoSs) is an annual short film festival/competition which brings together cutting-edge venues and film festivals across and beyond Europe in a unique simultaneous screening: “More than a Eurovision of Shortfilm”.

Each year a themed open call for submissions is posted worldwide. 10 – 15 shorts of any genre (but under 10 minutes) are selected to take part in the competition, which is screened simultaneously in all participating cities. A local winner is chosen by a jury of critics, curators and other film professionals in each city. Once all juries have compared their results the overall winner is awarded glory, fame and cash. So the audience can have some fun as well, we invite everyone to bet on which film will win. Bets must be placed before the screening. But no worries: trailers of all participating films are screened in all participating venues and on the website a week in advance of the competition. Those who have placed their bet well, can win cinema tickets, dvds, books and the like.

A Little Bit of History

BoSs was launched in 2005 by Ricarda Vidal and Louise Höjer, as an annual short film competition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London. BoSs is now run by Ricarda, Irini Marinaki, Konstantinos Stefanis and Sarah Sparkes.

In 2006 an invitation to programme three screenings in the Kunstfabrik in Berlin (’Vacant Films’) in collaboration with a local artist group marked the beginning of our international presence and formed the starting point of what was soon to grow into a large pan-European network of cultural organisations and institutions. With the aim to make BoSs into a truly international event, we contacted film curators, professionals and enthusiasts across the continent. In November 2007 we launched the first edition of “More than a Eurovision of Shortfilm” in collaboration with 10 partners.

Past and present partners since 2007 have included:

The ICA in London, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, Mikrokosmos Prince in Athens, Kino Rialto in Poznan, Pitkofi in Rostov-on-Don, KIBLA Multimedia Centre in Maribor, NFC Kinoklub in Novi Sad, the CCCB in Barcelona, Bilgi University in Istanbul, Point Ephémère in Paris, exground filmfestival in Wiesbaden, The Romanian Cultural Institute, Bucharest, art|house in Thessaloniki and Teater Scenario in Stockholm.