Positively Different Short Film Festival 2025 was embraced by the Athenian audience, who, with an impressive turnout and warm participation became part of a four-day celebration full of cinema, discussions and encounters, creation and daring imagination.
This year, the programme of the festival presented more diverse than ever, with 48 films that composed 9 thematic sets, which unveiled aspects and intersections of different societies, struggles and identities from all corners of the globe. Thursday’s and Friday’s mornings were dedicated to special closed screening for schools, in order for complicated topics to be introduced in easy to understand ways and for the opinions and concerns of young viewers to be heard. After each set, a Q&A followed, with creators present from the 29 films that were represented.
The festival, for one more year, was put in context through an open discussion titled “The fight for home: Collective resistances against the violence of displacement and gentrification”, which was coordinated by Eva Mpetavatzi, independant researcher, member of the European Coalition for Action for the rights to housing and the city. The speakers were Nikos Kourachanis, researcher, assistant professor in the field of Social Policy and Housing in Pan/teion University, Nefeli Rapsomaniki, member of the Tenants Association of Thessaloniki and Eleni Tzirtzilaki, PhD architect who carries out performances on public space, the city and the landscape.
In the screening of the same name that followed, representatives of four films were present. Lamis Souliman, production designer of the Egyptian film “Mango”, wearing her keffiyeh, dedicated the screening to the Palestinian people, with the words: “a few miles from here, there are people who experience the fight for home not as an abstract idea, but as a fight in the real life. If we want to imagine a different present and a different future, that can only begin from Palestine and Gaza”.
The jury committee of the 6th edition of the festival, Maria Louka, Thanasis Neofotistos, Karla Crnčević and Janis Westphal, awarded Palestine Islands by Nour Ben Salem and Julien Menanteau with the Best Film Award and Honeymoon by Alki Papastathopoulos with the Best Greek Production Award. They granted, also, 3 honourable mentions, to the films Pigeons are dying, when the city is on fire by Stavros Markoulakis, When the land runs away by Frederico Lobo and A Summer’s End Poem by Lam Can-Zhao. The audience voted for their favourite film, giving the Audience Award to Palestine Islands, which won two awards in this year’s festival. PDSFF25’s curatorial team granted the Curatorial Team Award to the film Alles Gut by Pavlos Paraskevopoulos.
We wholeheartedly thank the creators, volunteers, subtitlers, speakers and facilitators, photographers, the workers of the festival and the workers of Astor who hosted us. We also thank all of you, for filling the cinema hall, for being present, and supporting us, for taking a stance and asking questions. We thank you for dreaming with us!
See you next year, in PDSFF26!
*Photographers: Giorgos Lois & Konstantinos Tzemis
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