The 2026 short-film selection holds the mirror up to our times

The 2026 short-film selection holds the mirror up to our times, offering sensitive visions in which hope springs up in all directions. Intimate, unsettling, singular, gentle, and sharp, the ten films in competition bear witness to our imploding society without ever giving in. 

Nafron confronts reality and transfigures it through fiction. Set in Syria ravaged by the fall of Bashar al-Assad, Daood Alabdulaa captures an apocalyptic stroll in an abandoned city where, in the aftermath of the trauma, everything is to be rebuilt. 

What can be done with devastated landscapes? Visit into Irradiated Land offers another answer, following a guided tour through a village struck by nuclear disaster. Through animation that vibrates along with the story, Anne-Sophie Girault crafts a haunting dystopia. 

Some films also bring us back to our roots: Class Photo paints the melancholic portrait of two thirty-somethings as they revisit their childhood school. Arnas Balčiūnas brings his remarkable sense of composition to these two characters in search of connection. 

Berthold Wahjudi’s "Vaterland" or A Bule Named Yanto is also a return to one’s origins as a quest for identity. In this bittersweet story, we follow our protagonist from a German train to the discovery of his Indonesian background. 

Childhood is a fertile ground for storytelling. In City of Owls, a spellbinding metaphorical fable, director Zhenia Kazankina turns power outages into fantastical explorations of a night where anything can happen. 

In Man’mi, tales offer refuge to a granddaughter/young girl who witnesses her mother’s struggles, unable to help. Aude N'Guessan Forget weaves a gentle narrative in which the dull thump of systemic racism can be heard. 

Other works promise complete disconnection; Adgwa-Ata is a hallucinatory animated journey into the heart of female tribes in an imaginary jungle. Zsuzsana Kreif crafts a pop satire, a dazzling blend of the trivial and the divine. 

What Do You Seek in the Dark? is just as mad, with its ghostly cinema turned into a gay cruising spot. Tossaphon Riantong pays tribute to the history of cinema and blows it up through characters driven by red-hot desire. 

Skinny Boots teems with pickpockets and botched scams. Set in a Montreal in overdrive, Romain F. Dubois’s story about transmission is as delightful as it is burlesque. Finally, director Sarra Ryma introduces another irresistible duo. In What Do the Maknines Dream Of, two odd birds wander through Algiers where poetry brushes up against disenchantment. 

The special screening extends this momentum, moving between destructive impulses and vital forces. In The Sentinel, Nahuel Pérez Biscayart plays a disillusioned soldier. Ali Cherri grants him a moment out of time, in a daily life drained of meaning. This solitude finds an echo in that of the young women in I Think You Should Be Here. Elie Grappe and Anna-Marija Adomaityté explore life under the rule of algorithms in this documentary, shaped by a keen sense of movement. To conclude, Laïs Decaster invites us into the intimacy of a living room to follow the emotional rollercoaster that is Love Story. A chronicle of love and friendship, intoxicating in its verve and generosity. 

Through this selection we reassert our desire to discover new talents and to support them beyond these films. The filmmakers will have the opportunity to join our Next Step programme towards making their first feature film.