About the Festival
Positively Different Short Film Festival
Gender, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity, religion, able-bodiedness influence our present and future, life prospects and obstructions. Shedding light on life paths of “others” – often through realism and humor and other times through abstraction and experimentation – Positively Different Short Film Festival aims to act as a reference point for raising awareness with regards to intersectionality and discrimination, providing a safe space for co-creation and networking.
PDSFF24 | Love & Revolt, Call for Submissions
PDSFF24 | Love & Revolt, 7 – 10 March 2024, Athens (main event), special screenings in 10 cities around the world in 2024
PDSFF24 is a trans-local cinematographic space of creation and resistance. We collectively negate the existing order that disconnects and confines film-makers, communities and struggles. We claim a new space where we can be together in all our diversity – safe and brave at the same time. PDSFF24 is the fifth edition of the Positively Different Short Film Festival.
The central event will take place from 7 to 10 March 2024.
We invite filmmakers, documentarists, visual content creators, students and emerging artists to submit their shorts. We are particularly interested in the topic of intersectionality; in the stories of characters, communities and individuals that, due to their identities and life-experiences, remain unseen. Our team and audience are charmed by aesthetic coherence as much as they are excited by simplicity. Shorts that reflect bold visions and personal urgency are, essentially, what we are after!
The festival will feature a curated catalogue of approximately 35 short films that will be screened in Athens competing for 4 prizes – Best Film Award, Audience Award, Best Greek Production, Curators’ Award. Concerts, workshops, masterclasses, and discussions will assemble a four-day celebration of diversity, communities, and resistances. Special screenings of the award-winning films will take place in 10 European countries throughout the year.
We eagerly await the new creations and look forward to meeting you in the cinema for 4 days of screenings, discussions, and parallel actions.
The festival will support all finalists to join festival events in person.
Early bird submission deadline (free): 22/07
Regular submission deadline: 30/09
Submit your shorts here
For any further information, free waivers and any problems with the platform, contact positivelydifferentff@gmail.com
Announcements
Travelling with PDSFF - Summer screenings in France and Western Greece
Addressing youth from all around Europe is a rare privilege that we enjoyed during the screening in Loches co-organised with L’Europe en Berry Touraine. The selected shorts deal with intimate relationships of youth with peers, their families – physical or chosen ones – the climate crisis and the digital world. The audience, aged 16 to 18, raised profound questions about the festival and the filmmaking process and explained their preferences.
Mountains, fireflies and loved short movies; what is there not to like? PDSFF travelled once more to Western Greece to meet friends and aspiring filmmakers of Zagoriwood along with locals and visitors from nearby villages. We enjoyed films that celebrate friendship and solidarity and reminisce about home and community. PDSFF24 – Love & Revolt will be back to Zagorochoria in the summer of 2024. Until then don’t forget to send us your shorts! The submission deadline is open till September 30th.
Submit your shorts here
Four days of screenings, discussions, and ..resisting dystopia
This year’s edition leaves us with a bittersweet feeling. Kicking off the festival run on the day of the general workers’ strike, in the midst of artists squatting theaters and occupying university space, served as a reality check.
In Athens and other cities around Greece, actors protest and strike against a government decision that infringes on their professional and academic rights. On the one hand, this decision attacks artistic expression, of which no conservative ruler is fond. On the other, it is part of a broader strategy to pave the way for a crooked, socially dividing, and unjust version of private university education in the country.
PDSFF23 commenced with the announcement of free admission screenings, open to the public, as a minimum symbolic support to the strike. With full-house screenings every night of the four-day event and filmmakers attending after long delays and canceled flights, we -once again- realise the importance of storytelling and coming together in times when we are expected to retreat.
We wholeheartedly thank all the creators for sharing their stories, the festival workers, the subtitlers, the volunteers, curators, guest speakers, and everyone showing up and flooding TRIANON with their support and enthusiasm amidst the agonising developments in the Greek political sphere.
Until next year,
On behalf of the festival team
PDSFF23 Volunteers Training
On October 22 & 23, returning and new volunteers, along with the organisers of the Positively Different Short Film Festival, gathered at Inter Alia’s office for a two-day training.
On the first day, a series of activities and energisers were organised, where participants had the chance to get to know each other, but also discuss inclusion and address the concept of privilege, reflecting on personal and collective experiences.
Silent discussion
For the purposes of the first day of the training, which aimed to familiarise the participants with inclusion and privilege, the methodology of silent conversation was implemented. Silent conversation aims at providing participants with equal opportunities and a safe space where they can freely express their opinions in writing.
Three large poster-size papers were laid out on the floor, each one posing a different question:
“What does intersectionality mean for you?”
“Which identities, experiences, social positions affect your life and that of the people around you?”
“How do you think inclusivity is created? What do you need for a safe space and how do you make it for others?”
The participants were given markers and post-its and were encouraged to walk around the room, answer questions, respond to what others have written, leave comments and share thoughts.
At the end of the activity, everyone had the opportunity to speak in a group discussion and reflect on the process.
On the second day of the training, emphasis was placed on the film selection process. We talked about the festival’s values and approach, about the concept of content warning and about addressing violence without providing any extra space for it.
Screenings
In order to simulate the process of the film selection, three short films were screened from the previous years:
- At Intersections (6’)
- This is Right; Zak Life and After (13’)
- Feeling Through (18’)
This gave the opportunity for discussion on specific films. Lastly, we formed the small groups in which we will be working for the following months.
The #PDSFF23 preparations have begun!
Call for volunteers
It’s this time of the year!
As we’re collecting shorts from all around the globe, we’re also looking for our PDSFF23 film selection Volunteers’ team!
What you will gain from joining our team:
- Experience and professional training on:
a. film critique
b. the intersectionality framework
c. event accessibility - Collaboration with an international team of committed and motivated people
- All access to screenings and side events
What we’re looking for:
- Cinema related experience (professional, educational, volunteering)
- Interest in the topic of intersectionality
- Sense of responsibility
- Inclusion mindset
Complete the form below by September 25 & join the PDSFF23 team:
https://interaliaproject.com/participation/pdsff23-volunteer-call/
2023 Awards
Best Film Award
Best Greek Production
Audience Award
Left Handed
5PM Seaside
To Read them Poems
Curatorial Team Award
Honourable Mention
Honourable Mention
9th floor to the right
I woke up 18
Sex Relish (a solo orgasm)
Videos
Positively Different Short Film Festival 2023
Ultimate limit
(Un)familial relations & Oh what a world
The body I live in
The space* paradox
Brave new worlds
Ongoing dystopias
Positively Different Short Film Festival 2022
Positively Different 2022 Trailer
'Symptoms of masculinity' Round-table Discussion
Positively Different Short Film Festival 2021
Positively Different 2021 Trailer
Positively Different Short Film Festival 2020
Positively Different 2020 Aftermovie
Positively Different 2020 Trailer
Positively Different 2020 Teaser
Meet the Team
Organisers
Volunteers
Jury Committee
Artemis Anastasiadou
Director and screenwriter from Thessaloniki. She studied theatre at the Fine Arts School of AUTH and film direction at the University of Texas at Austin. Her latest film “Vancouver” was screened and honoured with a special mention at the Berlin Film Festival (2022) and received the IRIS award for best short fiction from the Hellenic Film Academy. Her film “I am Mackenzie” (2019) won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Texas Short at SXSW 2019. After spending over a decade editing films and documentaries, in 2017 she turned to teaching film .
Zacharias Mavroeidis
He studied architecture in Thessaloniki, theatre in Madrid and cinema in Athens and Cuba. He participated in the Berlinale and Sarajevo Talent Campus while he is a scholarship recipient of the Artworks program of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. He teaches screenwriting in schools in Athens. In September 2022, he was elected secretary general of the Hellenic Film Academy.
His documentary ACROSS HER BODY participated in the International Competition of the 60th Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. His second feature fiction, APOSTRATOS, won the Audience and Youth Awards of the AUTH student committee at the International Competition of the 60th Thessaloniki Film Festival as well as the IRIS Award for Best Screenplay 2020 and the Best Film Award at Kinenova 2020 IFF.
The release of his new film THE SUMMER OF CARMEN is expected in 2023. At the same time, he participated in the Script Lab of Cinekid FF with the feature animation NINE LIVES LEFT, an adaptation of his novel SEVEN SOULS IN THE MOUTH (Polaris Publications, 2014).
Venue
TRIANON is not a building where a business struggles to survive.
TRIANON is countless individuals who are struggling to support entrepreneurship in art
Having hosted everybody who is passionate about art.
Having relentlessly supported young Greek filmmakers.
Having resisted the decline of downtown Athens.
Believing every moment that “PATISION Lives”.
More info at: TRIANON.GR
Major sponsor
With the support of
Communication sponsors
Official Logos
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Download the Press Kit for PDSFF24 here
