The shnit international shortfilmfestival is an annual international film festival

Film festival

A film festival is an organised, extended presentation of films in one or more movie theaters or screening venues, usually in a single locality. More and more often film festivals show part of their films to the public by adding outdoor movie screenings...

 based in Berne

Berne

The city of Bern or Berne is the Bundesstadt of Switzerland, and, with a population of , the fourth most populous city in Switzerland. The Bern agglomeration, which includes 43 municipalities, has a population of 349,000. The metropolitan area had a population of 660,000 in 2000...

, Switzerland.

History

The festival was founded in 2003 under the name shnit Kurzfilmnächte. Over the course of the next couple of years the event for short films of all kind quickly evolved into a festival with an international competition, and a big variety of special programms, workshops and public film talks.

Since 2005 the shnit shortfilmfestival takes place in the PROGR center for cultural production and in various cinemas in the old town of Berne.

Since 2007 the festival is host of the Slam-Movie-Night.

With 6 festival locations, more than 65 screenings and an attendance of around 15'000 the shnit shortfilmfestival is the largest festival of its kind in Switzerland.

Programm and competitions

The festival focuses on innovative, amusing and enthralling short film of all kinds. Each programm features films of different genres technique in the same screening.

The centre point of the festival is the international competition shnit-Open. More than 2000 short films from all continents are annually submitted to the selection process. An official festival jury awards films in the categories SMART JOE (films under 4 minutes), MAGIC JACK (films from 4 to 10 minutes) and LONG JOHN (films over 10 minutes).

The international competition comprises own categories for Swiss and German productions.

The total prize money of the shnit-Open is CHF 45'000 (approximately USD 40'000).

Since 2007 the shnit shortfilmfestival also holds the REALTIME film challenge.

Award winners

Audience Award	Jury Award	Swiss Award
Year Film Director 2003 Metal King Thomas Gerber (CH) 2004 Right Here, Right Now Anand Gandhi Anand Gandhi Anand Gandhi is an independent filmmaker and screenwriter based in Mumbai. He was initially involved in parallel theatre, where he wrote and directed several critically acclaimed plays...  (IN) 2005 Breaking the Rules Gregor Ehrler (DE) 2006 Pizza Amore Achim Wendel (DE) 2007 Il neige à Marrakech Hicham Alhayat (CH) 2008 Antje und wir Felix Stienz (DE)	Year Film Director 2003 2004 2005 Nassrasur Boris Schaarschmidt (DE) 2006 Dachau bei München Frederik Ring (DE) 2007 Fair Trade Michael Dreher (DE) since 2008 see below	Year Film Director 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Rasende Liebe Jonas Meyer (CH) 2008 Nachglühen Lisa Blatter (CH)

SMART JOE (under 4 minutes)	MAGIC JACK (from 4 to 10 minutes)	LONG JOHN (over 10 minutes)
Year Film Director 2008 Three Angels Yulia Ruditskaya (BY)	Year Film Director 2008 The Facts in the Case of Mister Hollow Rodrigo Gudiño (CDN)	Year Film Director 2008 Ich träume nicht auf Deutsch Ivana Lalovic (CH)

Festival Jury

2005

• Anne Walser (producer C-Films)
• Ulrich Kündig (former director of Swiss Television)
• Ursula von Keitz (Cinema Studies, University of Zurich)

2006

• Andreas Thiel (satirist)
• Bettina Oberli (director)
• Daniel Ritz (video producer)

2007

• Tom Traber (director)
• Lucie Bader (Department for Performing Arts and Film, Zurich)
• Franz Fischlin (editor and moderator, Swiss Television)

2008

• Christoph Schaub (director and producer)
• Veronika Grob (Swiss Television)
• Moritz A. Sachs (actor)

External links

• - official website of the shnit shortfilmfestival (requires Adobe-Flash)