The Short of the Year Is...

🏆 The Short Awards

From nearly 200 Official Selections in 2025, 20 nominees were shortlisted by the Short of the Week Curation Team. Now there are seven winners. Meet the best online short film releases of 2025.

This is the 14th year we’ve delivered a version of these awards, emerging from the blogging-style Top Ten lists of the site’s early days. It is also the 6th year of their current format, with a jury-awarded distinction for ‘Short of the Year.’

Much love to this year’s jury of amazing filmmakers—Liza Mandelup, Esteban Predraza, and Renee Zhan—who deliberated on the nominees and ultimately recognized this year’s Short of the Year… Beyond Failure from Marissa Losoya!

There are also category winners in Drama, Comedy, Animation, and Documentary, plus a viewer-voted Audience Choice Award. You can catch up on all the winners via:

• Short of the Week Awards Post

• Shortverse Collection

• YouTube Playlist

Congratulations to all the winning film teams!

🔗 10 Things We’re Paying Attention To

1. Oscar Shorts Available to Watch - New short film nominees are available to watch, with Julia Aks and Steven Pinder’s pun-filled historical comedy now streaming for free on YouTube. The Singers, from S/W Alum Sam Davis, is streaming worldwide on Netflix, and Butcher’s Stain, plus perfectly a strangeness have hit the US service, Kanopy. In recent years, access to the nominated shorts has shrunk for online viewers, but a whopping 12 of the 15 shorts are streaming in some form or another—though they are increasingly finding homes on subscription services. As always, our SV collection is the best spot to stay on top of current availability ahead of next month’s ceremony.

2. BAFTA and BERLINALE Winners - Just hours ago, the UK’s annual film awards were handed out. Best British Animation went to Two Black Boys in Paradise, which has been killing it at recent fests, and Best British Short Film went to This is Endometriosis, an intriguing project that blends PSA, docu-fiction, and experimental film techniques. Available to watch on Vimeo, the award is a capstone to a long journey for the film, which premiered at Hot Docs in 2022. This weekend also saw Berlinale’s famous ‘bears’ handed out. Congrats to Marie-Rose Osta, whose film Yawman ma walad (Someday a Child) took home the Golden Bear for Best Short Film. Preview the 21 film competition lineup in this collection.

3. Kickstarter’s Month-Long Celebration of Shorts Begins Soon - Long Story Short is the crowdfunding giant’s annual spotlight on short film projects. We covered the initiative’s 2020 debut, and its mission to “celebrate bold short films and the visionary people who make them” is unchanged. All throughout March, the company will promote shorts in Kickstarter newsletters, on social media, and more. It’s not too late to participate, learn more, and apply here!

4. Sean Baker Screens New Fashion Short at Berlinale - Overshadowing the competition lineup at Berlinale was a presentation of a new short from the reigning Oscar Best Director. Starring fellow Oscar-winner Michelle Yeoh, the short is for the London brand self-portrait, as part of their “residency” platform, and is now streaming on the film’s website and on YouTube.

5. New Video Hosting Platform Debuts - We get asked by a lot of people, “What’s the new Vimeo?” Shortverse is our attempt at replicating aspects of the classic Vimeo experience, but if hosting is something you need, keep an eye out for Framerate. Still in beta, I’m liking its proposed mix of functional utility and social elements. Content-wise, it’s seeding itself with deep connections within the mograph community, and just added Motionographer co-founder, Justin Cone, as a late founder.

6. The AI Director’s Playbook - Sticking with mograph and animation, Erica Gorochow is a respected creator in both communities, and in a new post, documented the AI-assisted process she and her team used to craft a social ad for Google this holiday season. She remarks that, “Working on this, and other AI-driven work, has given me back a sense of play I hadn’t felt since early in my career.”

7. Nonfiction Hotlist x Yahoo Team Up for Distro Opp - The Nonfiction Hotlist burst out of the gate last year as a major project, debuting as a Blacklist-style spotlight on in-development features. But, sponsoring parties at DocNYC and talks at other film festivals hinted at a wider mandate for the nascent org. Therefore, it’s of little surprise to see a new initiative take shape, as they’ve partnered with Yahoo to distribute 20 short films across the internet giant’s various properties. With an enticing $5k licensing fee and the promise of robust exposure, it’s an opportunity worth checking out.

8. Mona Fastvold Directs a New Short for Miu Miu - The Testament of Ann Lee was one of the biggest snubs this Oscar season. Kindly express your sympathies to Fastvold by watching her new film, Discipline, the latest short in the Women’s Tales series from Italian fashion brand Miu Miu. Celia Rowlson-Hall choreographs this haunting experimental work that examines the performance of femininity between girls and garments.

9. Alum Acquisition Roundup - Quick shoutout to a bunch of S/W alums whose films sold recently. The market at Sundance was slow last month, but a couple of films from celebrated short filmmakers secured distribution ahead of the fest. Natalie Erika James had Saccharine grabbed by Shudder, while Charlie Tyrell saw The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist picked up by Focus Features. At the fest, two more acquisitions occurred, with Stephanie Ahn’s debut, Bedford Park going to Sony Pictures Classics, and Netflix making Ben Proudfoot’s short documentary, The Baddest Speechwriter of All, their only post-premiere acqusition to-date. Lastly, we’ve got some pre-fest action before next month’s SXSW, as Caleb Phillips sees his feature debut, Imposters, sell worldwide to the UK’s Blue Finch Films.

10. What To Watch This Week- Not posting last week means we missed recommending it ahead of its debut, but the new HBO documentary show, Neighbors, is too good to ignore. The series comes from two-time S/W alum, Dylan Redford, and profiles absurd, real-life conflicts between Florida neighbors. This piece in Esquire dives into the project’s genesis, and critics proclaim it a hit, saying that in addition to its outrageous comedy, it also "…gets to the heart of our political moment.” Check out the trailer below!

📅 This Week on Short of the Week