19 - 28 January 2024

The London Short Film Festival returns for its 21st year with a constellation of new films, new curators, and new talent to ring in 2024 with the best in short-form cinema, selected from over 5,000 international submissions.

Intimacy and mysticism intertwine with solidarity, memory and radical histories across this year's programme. Multifaceted, experimental and urgent filmmaking from across the world comes to London with 10 days of screenings, discussions and industry events.

Fri 19 Jan, 6.30pm
i like my body when it is with your body + Q&A
The 21st LSFF opens with a programme of repertory and new short film that focuses on desire, touch and relationships, made by British filmmakers.




Fri 19 Jan, 8pm
LSFF, Four Chambers and Zodiac Film Club: The Address of the Eye
Four Chambers, Zodiac Film Club and LSFF welcome you into the ICA theatre on opening night for a multi-screen, multi-format screening of films that mirror and speak to each other, entwined around themes of sex, domesticity, looking, and the materiality of cinema.




Fri 19 Jan, 9.30pm
Funny Shit
It wouldn't be opening night without LSFF's annual comedy extravaganza, from dry to slapstick, ponderous to nonsensical, and acerbic to heartfelt.




Sat 20 Jan, 1pm
Animation Variety Show
Our annual celebration of animation features filmmakers from across the world, creating beautiful and inspiring works that push against and leap from the cinema screen.




Sat 20 Jan, 3pm
Rhythms of Revolution: The Sara Gómez Shorts + Panel Discussion
A rarely-seen series of shorts (some screening for the first time in London) directed by Sara Gómez between the early 1960s and 1970s, this programme offers a study of rhythms during the critical stage of the revolutionary process.



Sat 20 Jan, 5.45pm
Shasha Movies: Films from Palestine
Shasha Movies is delighted to present a special screening of artist films from Palestine. Each film echoes the heart of a landscape steeped in history, struggle and hope.



Sat 20 Jan, 8.30pm
Documentary: Time will say nothing but i told you so
In our powerlessness against the passing of time, how do we bridge the gaps between then and now? Join us in acts of remembrance and intimate reckonings with the past.




Sun 21 Jan, 1pm
Documentary: The house shelters daydreaming
There are many ways we can define a space: its location, its contents, its purpose. We might define a space through our relationship with it; our subjective experience of 'space' and 'self' interwoven.



Sun 21 Jan, 3pm
Nowness China Short Film Programme
Join the NOWNESS China team and special guests for screenings of their CHINA WAVE film series, with additional panel discussion following the 5th NOWNESS China Short Film Awards, held in Shanghai in December 2023 and supported by Chanel.



Sun 21 Jan, 5.30pm
Animals
Non-human and human creatures alike feature in this selection of new documentary, animation and drama.




Tue 23 Jan, 6.30pm
LSFF × The Arts Foundation Short Documentary Film Screening + Q&A
Join us for a special screening featuring the extraordinary shortlisted filmmakers of The Arts Foundation Futures Awards 2024 for Short Documentary Film.




Tue 23 Jan, 8.45pm
LSFF × T A P E Collective: Unforgotten
In today’s interconnected world where everything leave a footprint, how much control do we have over being perceived, or remembered? This programme looks at the permanence of our online lives, alongside the stories of those who appear forgotten or erased from history entirely.




Wed 24 Jan, 6.30pm
Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More
In this programme, ranging from travelogues to pornography, from fast food commercials to dictators‘ executions on live TV, six films capture the first encounter with the newly rediscovered ‘other’ in a recently unified post-Cold War Europe.




Wed 24 Jan, 8.45pm
LSFF × Cinema Mentiré: SEÑ@R INTERNET
This programme of Latin American short films explores the internet and our digital nature in a variety of ways. The films are creative, fun, thought-provoking, and sometimes even critical of the internet's impact on our lives.



Thu 25 Jan, 12.30pm
Competition: This Must Be The Place
This collection of competition films, selected from across the LSFF programme, traverse time and space and the spectrum of human emotion.



Thu 25 Jan, 2.30pm
Competition: There Are New Suns
Filmmaking and watching offer us a way to imagine new horizons, or alternate worlds that are already out there. What planes and dimensions exist alongside our own, and what images can we summon from there to here?



Thu 25 Jan, 3pm
LSFF × LCC: Sick Jazz + Live Performance
From the performance halls of Havana to the lofts of New York and the back streets of Milan, Sick Jazz is a dynamic and experimental screening and performance event.




Thu 25 Jan, 6.15pm
LSFF × LCC: Álà Black Joy
ÁLÀ, translated from Yoruba to mean Dreams, is an ode to Black heritage through film, fashion, music and photography.




Thu 25 Jan, 8.45pm
LSFF × T A P E Collective: Black Country 3.0 + Q&A
The third iteration of T A P E Collective’s Black Country programme for LSFF once again looks beyond the London borders to stories centring the Black British experience outside of the capital.



Fri 26 Jan, 12.30pm
Competition: Growing Up In Public
Coming of age is far from easy, as these competition-nominated films demonstrate. Growing pains and harrowing encounters are par for the course as we navigate the twisting road of identity, family and the inner workings of our developing brains.



Fri 26 Jan, 2.30pm
Competition: A Trick Of The Light
Perception is of course subjective, but the collective viewing experience can conjure a magic all of its own. Images swirl and distort in our memories, and films we’ve seen can swim to the surface years later. The films in this programme subvert the visual medium, playing tricks on the viewer and manipulating images from decades ago using AI.



Fri 26 Jan, 4pm
LSFF × LCC: The Southall Shift
A programme capturing the history of Southall, a once 'small town' in West London that has evolved into the community known as ‘Little India’. This program delves into the profound struggles and triumphs of that community, showcasing its transformative journey in the past 70 years.




Fri 26 Jan, 6pm + 7pm
LSFF × LCC: What Hides in Your Mind?
Prepare to embark on a chilling journey through the history of digital folklore from the beginning of the millennium to the present era of internet horror.




Fri 26 Jan, 6.45pm
Zimmers: From Southall To Venice
Born from an ongoing photography project of the same name, this short documentary series by British Punjabi documentary photographer Hark1Karan celebrates the Indian car community that thrives throughout the West London borough of Southall.




Fri 26 Jan, 8pm
Rave Cinema
Everybody in the place, make some noise. LSFF throws it back in the ICA Theatre to the heyday of 90s club culture with a selection of short films from that iconic era, mixed with contemporary works that evoke the same free spirit and good vibes. 




Fri 26 Jan, 9pm
Over The Hill and Far Away
Deep within a foggy wood or out in a verdant green field; the countryside holds magic, history and fantastical visions, as this selection of shorts reveals.




Sat 27 Jan, 2pm
Documentary: Only Connect
At the core of all human life is the need for connection; a longing for togetherness and belonging. This programme explores humans’ plight for interdependence.




Sat 27 Jan, 4.30pm
Documentary: Image//Making
What makes an image? Sifting up close through reels and photographs, some of us become masters of forensics, reconstructing a moment or a person no longer with us. Other times we step back – outside of oneself, outside of the place or time we inhabit – in order to watch a bigger picture form.




Sat 27 Jan, 7pm
We Need To Talk: Intergenerational Cinema of Asian Diaspora in Germany
This short documentary film program conceptualises autoethnographic process-oriented collaborations across generations for the ESEA diaspora in Germany.





Sun 28 Jan, 1pm
The Films of Ian Pons Jewell
This screening, of work by commerical and music director Ian Pons Jewell includes music videos for Kwes, Tinie Tempah, Beardyman, and Paolo Nutini alongside short films, provides an opportunity to see Ian's uncompromising vision in action.