Tuesday morning marked the deadline for submitting a short film for this year’s festival in Odense. And with exactly 3.264 short films submitted for OFF19, the festival has a new record on its hands. Between 2018 and 2019 the number of submissions has increased by almost 25 %, a fact that certainly calls for celebration! Festival director Birgitte Weinberger believes the cause for the boost in submitted films lies partly in the festival’s most recent succes story:

Last year, the Irish short film Detainment won our Academy Award-qualifying HCA Award, the Grand Prix of our Main Competition, and went straight to the selection jury of the Academy . And, as you may know, Detainment ended up being nominated for an Academy Award. I guess a lot of filmmakers, national and international, has been inspired by the succes of Detainment and has decided to submit their films for our festival this year.

A hard-working jury

To watch and analyze the submitted short films is a hard-working jury. The jury comprises animator Sara Koppel, writer Christian Gamst Miller-Harris and festival director Birgitte Weinberger. Over the course of the next weeks the jury will select about a 100 films for the OFF19 competition programme. Come may, the selected filmmakers will be notified and the official competition programme will be announced.