EIFF

Shorts Programmes

PG

Our Cinema 26 Shorts: ‘What is felt but not spoken’ with Scott Graham

Our Cinema 26 Shorts: ‘What is felt but not spoken’ with Scott Graham

Our Cinema is an innovative new approach to film education in Scotland delivered by Transgressive North and Folk Film Gathering and modelled on Japan’s world-leading

...
117 mins
15+

Bridging The Gap Shorts

Bridging The Gap Shorts

EIFF is delighted to present the World Premieres of the most exciting new short form documentaries coming from Scotland, supported by the Scottish Documentary Institute

...
104 mins
12A

My Little Blue Heart

World Premiere

My Little Blue Heart

In a nightmarish Britain of the near future, Mustafa and his deaf sister are pursued by vigilantes. Attacked in their rural hiding place, the pair become separated in this breathlessly paced and powerful thriller with much on its mind. -...
World Premiere
Iqbal Mohammed
2026
11 mins
12A

Bubbles

World Premiere

Bubbles

An immigrant housemaid discovers that her wealthy employer is also her landlord in this slyly satirical character study about class, power and hypocrisy. - Paul Ridd...
World Premiere
Jagoda Tłok
2026
14 mins
15+

Shutterbug

World Premiere

Shutterbug

Am ambitious young music photographer experiences a long dark night of the soul as he is confronted with the sordid reality and dark power games played by the musician he looks up to in this clear-eyed rumination on fame, power...
World Premiere
Fin Bain
2026
14 mins
15+

PANG

World Premiere

PANG

Two friends since childhood wrestle with the ambiguities and complexities of their relationship when a lazy afternoon by the pool evolves into something unexpected in this elegant and unpredictable story of queer longing and adolescent uncertainty. - Paul Ridd...
World Premiere
Lara Delmage
2026
12 mins
15+

Saint Anthony

World Premiere

Saint Anthony

A troubled young man debates whether to enter church on the day of his devoutly catholic mother's funeral in this darkly comic portrait of grief, regret and redemption, complete with fourth wall breaks, introspection and even a miracle....
World Premiere
Declan Dineen
2026
12 mins
12A

The Angel In The House

World Premiere

The Angel In The House

A woman trapped in a loveless marriage and domestic drudgery takes steps to break away in this sharply composed and haunting character study full of ambiguity, unspoken feelings and quiet rage. - Paul Ridd...
World Premiere
Missy McNaught
2026
12 mins
U

Headphones

World Premiere

Headphones

Headphones that once played music now only muffle the sound of Zoë's parents ongoing arguments. Could meeting a stranger at the beach open new perspectives?...
World Premiere
Zoë Allmer-Sears, Freya Drever, Jannat Khan, Antia Quintero Villaverde, Andrew Watson, Isla Watt
2026
12 mins
U

The Last Whisper

World Premiere

The Last Whisper

Three school friends celebrate a birthday before heading into the woods for a camping trip. When one of them hears strange whispers calling from the darkness, she disappears into the forest alone. As night falls, will she return to her...
World Premiere
Jewel Binoy, Leon Bruce, Keira Keicher-Alanis, Adel Navratilova, Eilidh Smrek, Lexi Tait
2026
7 mins
12A

Horizons

World Premiere

Horizons

Fiona visits her childhood home for her mum’s birthday where absent family members and her mum’s strange indifference force her to consider whether clinging to tradition is the best way forward. - Paul Ridd...
World Premiere
Rachel Maclean
2025
13 mins
15+

User

World Premiere

User

In the not too distant future, a man without hope attempts to save the life he was hired to end with HELPER, a world changing technology that allows anyone to possess another's body at the host's request....
World Premiere
Isaac Sparks
2026
14 mins
PG

Passing Place

World Premiere

Passing Place

A young Asian woman awakes on a surreal island after being mistakenly declared dead. Trapped in a bizarre afterlife bureaucracy that mirrors modern immigration systems, she must complete absurd tasks to prove her identity, or risk being erased and forgotten...
World Premiere
Hamza Bin Tahir
2026
16 mins
12A

Ñuuyii (Earth)

European Premiere

Ñuuyii (Earth)

A young astronaut lands with his spaceship on an unknown planet. He surveys the landscape, and finds an abandoned city, an overgrown cemetery, and lush greenery. As he wanders around, he recognises fragments from ancient stories he once heard. There...
European Premiere
Itandehui Jansen
2025
11 mins
15+

Skerry & May

World Premiere

Skerry & May

On a remote island, a woman reunites with the man she once loved and lost, leading to a final conversation that challenges them both to confront the nature of memory and identity, and of loving and letting go....
World Premiere
Edinburgh Napier University’s Screen Academy Scotland
2025
15 mins
U

Departures

World Premiere

Departures

With her home life deteriorating and her best friend and confidante Maya getting close with the new girl Elizabeth, will Abigail take the life changing decision to run away forever? And will Maya come with her?...
World Premiere
Ohenewaa Ewurama Amanfo, James Dodson, Clara Grace Mackie Gallardo, Anna Julia Melideo Redman, Laila Magdalena Orpel, Jay Elizabeth Pfohl
2026
8 mins
12A

Bergamot

World Premiere

Bergamot

Bergamot is an abstract, poetic, surreal look at the internal war one carries as a reflection of what it feels like to search for justice when your world is overshadowed by conflict....
World Premiere
Laleh Ajampour
2026
4 mins
12A

Abuela

World Premiere

Abuela

An intimate, investigative documentary retracing the life of Maria Jesús Echevarría. A brilliant, overlooked Spanish writer whose story was shaped by the wrong time, the wrong systems, and the right words....
World Premiere
Monica Echevarria
2026
16 mins
15+

HAG

UK Premiere

HAG

Hilarious and moving, this urban fantasy balances authenticity with wild invention in a celebratory journey of self love. -Jake Cunningham...
UK Premiere
Anna Ginsburg
2025
17 mins
15+

Hidden Trees

World Premiere

Hidden Trees

A poetic observational documentary set within the remote Scottish therapeutic community ‘Lothlorien’, where residents with severe mental health difficulties learn to sit with their inner turmoil through nature, routines and peer support. But as the seasons shift, the pressure rises:...
World Premiere
Sophie van Bree
2026
18 mins
15+

No Place Like Home

World Premiere

No Place Like Home

Writer and filmmaker Michael Lee Richardson revisits a childhood favourite film and finds a secret hidden inside all along. Part biography, part personal essay, the film blends 80s nostalgia and camp aesthetics to reclaim the narrative of North East queer...
World Premiere
Michael Lee Richardson
2026
13 mins
15+

Cherry Picker

World Premiere

Cherry Picker

Part experimental documentary, part visceral horror, this quasi-autobiographical account of renting and housing precarity digs under the skin of the dynamic between landlord and tenant, mixing in humour, wordplay and a fiercely feminist perspective. - Emma Boa...
World Premiere
Olive Jones
2026
10 mins
15+

When the Fires Stop

World Premiere

When the Fires Stop

After over a century of operating a local refinery is closing, plunging the town of Grangemouth into limbo. A static camera observes the factory, the town and its people in this elegant study of industrial decline and uncertainty. - Emma...
World Premiere
Matthew Dunsmore
2026
17 mins
15+

Amongst Men

World Premiere

Amongst Men

Amongst Men follows Brendan Holland, a man living with giantism, as he reflects on the life and contested legacy of his ancestor Charles Byrne, the “Irish Giant.” Through Brendan’s voice, the film asks who has the right to decide how...
World Premiere
Katie McFadden
2026
15 mins
15+

Feral

World Premiere

Feral

A young feral cat is caught and her kittens taken away to be tamed. A story which reflects on our own discord with the natural world....
World Premiere
Miranda Rose Carter-Watson
2026
11 mins
12A

Kontrewers

UK Premiere

Kontrewers

Kontrewers follows an imagined encounter between the ghost of a possessed girl, bound to a folktale and trapped within a stone, and the filmmaker’s 102-year-old grandmother, confined to her living room and nearing death. Drawn to the pious older woman,...
UK Premiere
Zuza Banasinska
2026
21 mins
PG

Unidentifizierte Unflugobjekte (UUO)

UK Premiere

Unidentifizierte Unflugobjekte (UUO)

However permanent and stable any order may seem, it may eventually crumble when reality outside of the system creeps in, growing like organic matter through the boundaries that the order has imposed....
UK Premiere
Sasha Svirsky
2026
12 mins
15+

As I Lay Dying

UK Premiere

As I Lay Dying

We were many. When it was all over, we went our separate ways....
UK Premiere
Mohammadreza Farzad, Pegah Ahangarani
2025
15 mins
U

I am a River

UK Premiere

I am a River

Inspired by Pablo Neruda’s Book of Questions—a collection of lyrical, unanswerable poems that playfully interrogate nature, life, and the cosmos—the film weaves poetic inquiry with visual abstraction through the rarely used mordançage technique. Its veil-like formations evoke the fluid, fragile,...
UK Premiere
Heidi Piiroinen
2026
6 mins
U

How to Listen to Fountains

UK Premiere

How to Listen to Fountains

This film is about public space. This film is about the destruction of culture. This film is about fountains that have had enough. What would happen if fountains could speak?...
UK Premiere
Eva Sajanová
2025
10 mins

More events

Picked for you.

Birthmark

A woman makes her way to a sex worker to discover something about herself....
George Peter Barbari
2026
21 mins

Imposters

How far would you go to save your child? This is the moral quandary an on-the-rocks husband and wife face in Caleb J. Phillips’...
Caleb Phillips
2026
102 mins

KIND

A 16-minute dark comedy critiquing virtue culture, in which a privileged man presents himself as a champion of the marginalised, until his moral posturing...
Jenny Carson
2026
16 mins