Manhattan Short Film Festival 2023

The 26th Annual

MANHATTAN SHORT Film Festival.

ONE WORLD – ONE WEEK – ONE FESTIVAL

Join us, with over 100,000 film lovers in over 500 cities across six continents gather for one reason…to view and vote on the Finalists’ Films in the 26th Annual MANHATTAN SHORT Film Festival.

The MANHATTAN SHORT Final Ten are:

Sunless

Director: Boris Vesselinov
Country: USA
Running Time: 8:00
Synopsis: Trapped in the confines of a tiny submarine, two men disagree on how to navigate a potentially perilous issue with their vessel.

VOICE ACTIVATED

Director: Steve Anthopoulos
Country: Australia
Running Time: 12:00
Synopsis: A florist with a stutter is forced to cooperate with a voice-activated car on the way to an important delivery.

YELLOW

Director: Elham Ehsas
Country: UK/Afghanistan
Running Time: 13:00
Synopsis: In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, a woman walks into a chadari store in Kabul to buy her first full-body veil and face an uncertain future.

TUULIKKI

Director: Teemu Nikki
Country: Finland
Running Time: 14:00
Synopsis: When a young woman dominated by an over-protective mother plots her escape, their relationship dissolves into one of mutual suspicion.

THE FAMILY CIRCUS

Director: Andrew Fitzgerald
Country: USA
Running Time: 17:00
Synopsis: A Vietnamese-American family’s plan to cover up a drunk-driving incident begins to unravel when their emotional baggage spills out in front of the police.

CAREER DAY

Director: Jason Robinson & Chris Hooper
Country: USA
Running Time: 10:00
Synopsis: A once promising 90’s pop star and his aging boy band reunite for his daughter’s elementary school Career Day. They go viral.

SNAIL

Director: Aminreza Alimohammadi
Country: Iran
Running Time: 14:00
Synopsis: A loving mother strives to make her young son’s singing dreams come true but an audition takes a dramatic, unforeseen turn.

THE RECORD

Director: Jonathan Laskar
Country: Switzerland
Running Time: 8:38
Synopsis: An antique musical instrument dealer obsessively plays a magical vinyl record that “reads your mind and plays your lost memories.” Even the forgotten ones.

STUPID BOY

Director: Phil Dunn
Country: United Kingdom
Running Time: 15:00
Synopsis: In London, a broken man groomed for a terrorist attack confronts a local lad who sees things differently. That can be dangerous.

SOLIEL DE NUIT

Director: Fernando López Escrivá, Maria Camila Arias
Country: Canada
Running Time: 13:00
Synopsis: While training for a moon landing, a group of Canadian astronauts are tasked with an added mission by a Native American elder.

Finalists will become eligible to enter the Oscars 2024
Every Film Selected for MANHATTAN SHORT 2023 will be Automatically Qualified for the Oscars of 2024. MANHATTAN SHORT does a full week’s run at a cinema in Hollywood which is advertised in the LA Weekly. This advertised run automatically qualifies each film for the Oscars.

“It’s the Public that Creates Stars”

MANHATTAN SHORT began in 1998, when founder Nicholas Mason gathered an audience of 200 people and showed 16 short films on a screen mounted to the side of a truck on Mulberry Street, Little Italy, New York City. A year later the Festival moved uptown to Union Square Park NYC, where audiences grew to love the annual event. From these humble beginnings, MANHATTAN SHORT has now transformed into a worldwide phenomenon. Celebrating its 26th birthday in 2023, MANHATTAN SHORT is the only film festival on the planet to unfold simultaneously, in more than 500 cinemas on six continents, bringing over 100,000 film-lovers in all corners of the globe together for one week, via the next generation of filmmakers. Click here to read how it all began.