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Queer Shorts Vienna
Thursday, 26 February 2026 until Sunday, 01 March 2026
QUEER SHORTS VIENNA, International Queer Short Film Festival aims to support and promote queer filmmaking from local and international creators, while celebrating diversity in society for all LGBTIQA+ individuals and marginalized communities. We want to showcase a wide range of creative and impactful short films that explore the joys and challenges of queer life, including both mainstream and alternative productions.
As we establish QUEER SHORTS VIENNA as an international platform, we hope to become a gathering place for queer artists, fostering community exchange and supporting the industry. Additionally, we aim to address the difficulties that the pandemic has brought to the queer artistic community through networking and community initiatives.
Join us in this exciting celebration of queer storytelling and submit your films now!
Best International Queer Short
Best National Queer Short
2026 films...
Queer Opening Shorts
Queer Shorts Vienna returns with an opening programme that foregrounds queer visibility in all its complexity. Drawing from highlights across the festival, this selection of short films offers a first glimpse into the breadth and diversity of this year’s curatorial focus.
Short films work through concentration and precision. Within a limited time frame, they create space for tenderness, urgency, humour, and desire. The selection moves across themes of love, coming of age, queer identity, minority experiences, and playful engagements with gender and sexuality — without reducing them to a single narrative.
The evening is accompanied by a drag performance, expanding the cinematic programme into a live, embodied form of queer expression. Together, film and performance mark the beginning of a festival dedicated to queer voices from around the world.
Join us to celebrate visibility, presence, and the collective experience of queer cinema.
Forbidden Love, Yavuz Kurtulmus, Austria 2025, no dialogue with EN subs, 12 min
Don't Cry For Me All You Drag Queens, Kristal Sotomayor, United States 2024, English OV with EN subs, 9 min
Pill Nation, Bruno Tadeu, Brazil 2024, Portuguese OV with EN subs, 22 min
Xavier and Miguel, Ricky Mastro, Brazil, 2022, Portoguese OV with EN subs, 12 min
If We Keep Talking in Summer Days, Liu Haotian, China & Singapore 2022, Chinese OV with EN subs, 15 min
Letizia, Francesco Manzato, Italy, 2022, Italian OV with EN subs, 18 min
Some stories are loud, some stay quiet, but all share a sense of urgency: to be seen, to exist differently, to take up space. Coming of age here doesn’t mean arriving somewhere — it means beginning, again and again, on your own terms.
In Between Days, Valerie Mitterer & Lea Marks, Austria & Spain 2025, Spanish OV with EN subs, 18 min
Stateside, Dennis Shinners, United States 2025, English OV with EN subs, 12 min
Palapasabra, Marc Jaén Castells & Abril García Arancibia, Spain 2023, Spanish OV with EN subs, 5 min
Shitty Liking, Linua, Austria 2024, German OV with EN subs, 11 min
Spicy Noodles, Sophia Hochedlinger, Austria 2025, German OV with EN subs, 10 min
The First Kiss, Miguel Lafuente, Spain, 2023, Spanish OV with EN subs, 15 min
Hate, Emiliano Sisolfi, Italy 2022, Italian OV with EN subs, 8 min
Queer Youth Shorts
These films don’t just show queerness; they look queerly. Sometimes playful, sometimes confrontational, their gaze wanders across bodies, objects, and glances, lingering where others might turn away. Desire shimmers beneath surfaces. Meaning flickers at the edges.
Even when queerness isn’t spoken, it’s there — in framing, in rhythm, in the way light hits skin. This is not a fixed point of view, but a way of seeing that slips, slides, and shifts. It reclaims the right to look — and to be looked at differently.
On Falling, Antonia Luxem, United Kingdom 2024, English OV with EN subs, 15 min
Quears, Shabnam Singla, India 2023, English OV with EN subs, 24 min
tengrisms iii, Cemre Ceytengri Serin & Beril Acar, Turkey 2024, Turkish OV with EN subs, 4 min
Chulicha, Sonia Patrinou, Greece 2025, Greek OV with EN subs, 14 min
Don't Cry For Me All You Drag Queens, Kristal Sotomayor, United States 2024, English OV with EN subs, 9 min
Erion, Marius Gabriel Stancu, 2025, English OV with EN subs, 9 min
From awkward first dates to deep longing, from sweet glances to heartbreak and healing. With humor, tenderness, and cinematic charm, these stories remind us that love is never one-size-fits-all — and that queer love deserves its own spotlight, full of nuance, tension, joy, and surprise. Swipe right on this program. You might just fall in love.
LIKE THE VERY GODS, Lazarus Lazarides, United States, 2024, English OV with EN subs, 12 min
I Hope He Doesn't Kill Me, Lyndon Henley Hanrahan & Nora Dahle Borchgrevink, United Kingdom 2024, English OV with EN subs, 14 min
Remember I Am Dead, Noel Alejandro Spain, English, 28min
M, Christina Burchard, United States, 2024, English OV with EN subs, 9 min
Not Close Enough To You, Lea Haufler, Germany, 2023, English OV with EN subs, 4 min
Oxide, Emma Emily Daelman, Belgium 2023, No Dialogue, 6 min
Gilipollas, Joan Bentallé & Pol Diggler, Spain 2023, Spanish OV with EN subs, 7 min
With moving and thoughtful films from around the globe, this program offers space for stories that often remain unheard, yet are vital to the full picture of queer existence. A powerful and uplifting selection that celebrates visibility, empathy, and the richness of queer experiences in all their forms.
Forbidden Love, Yavuz Kurtulmus, Austria 2025, no dialogue with EN subs, 12 min
Maghreb's hope, Bassem Ben Brahim, Tunisia 2023, Arabic OV with EN subs, 24 min
Neon roses, Iven Tu, United States 2023, English, 11 min
Du Bist So Wunderbar (Paradise Europe), Leandro Goddinho & Paulo Menezes, Germany 2023, English, German, Portuguese OV with EN subs, 17 min
Shoot Your Shot, Mishaal Memon, UK & India, 2022, English OV, 12 min
Some films explore nonbinary identity directly; others inscribe queerness into genre, into silence, into looks that linger too long or not long enough. Certain works hold the body close — skin, scars, movement — yet refuse to pin it down. What emerges isn’t a singular narrative, but a constellation of subtext, tension, tenderness. These films don’t seek clarity. They slip between codes, spill out of categories, and insist on a cinema that holds space for ambiguity, softness, and resistance — all at once.
Save my soul, Kam Fai LEUNG, Hong Kong 2023, Yue Chinese (Cantonese) OV with EN subs, 14 min
If I Were You... (I Actually Am), Silvia Marcantoni Taddei, Italy 2024, English OV with EN subs, 6 min
KASIOPAIA.15, Felix Siegl, Austria 2023, no dialogue with English subs, 10 min
the occurrence of colours by night, Sophie Lenglachner, Austria & Germany 2022, No Dialogue, 5 min
Bodies, Clouds, Tino None, 2024, English OV with EN subs, 1 min
Underwater, Yuxin Wang, China 2025, Chinese OV with EN subs, 16 min
Nature Calling: Mountains, littlefishtino, China 2024, English OV with EN subs, 1 min
Private Flowers, HAUI, Canada 2023, English OV, 7 min
Berry Wilde, Mika Aloisia Sattler, Austria 2024, German OV with EN subs, 24 min
Their works resist the expected, search for softness, and play with genre, tone, and form. Some explore queer experience directly, others turn to metaphor, desire, or silence. Together, they sketch a cinematic landscape that’s fragmented, and full of contradictions. Not a history, but a snapshot: of what queer filmmaking in Austria can be today — and how much it still wants to become.
SAPERE AUDE, Martin Willibald Meisl, Austria 2024, English OV, 11 min
Weightless, Sofie Spreitzer, Austria 2023, German OV, 14 min
Fall into Each other, Vivian Bausch, Austria 2024, German OV, 6 min
DOLLZ, Maria Gladitsch, Austria 2025, 5 min
Forbidden Love, Yavuz Kurtulmus, Austria 2025, no dialogue with EN subs, 12 min
Fragments, Lisa Jabornig, Austria 2024, German OV, 17 min