German auteur Maren Ade will take the helm as president of the short films and La Cinef Jury at the 78th Cannes Film Festival.
The “Toni Erdmann” director-producer will be joined by a panel including American director-producer Reinaldo Marcus Green (“King Richard”), French multi-hyphenate Camélia Jordana, Spanish industry veteran José María Prado, and Croatian filmmaker Nebojša Slijepčević.
The jury will evaluate 11 shorts competing for the Short Film Palme d’or and 16 student films vying for three La Cinef prizes.
This year’s Short Film Competition, culled from a 4,781 submissions, features nine fiction and two animated shorts, with five helmed by female directors.
The Short Film Palme d’or will be presented during the festival’s closing ceremony on May 24, while La Cinef winners will be announced at a dedicated ceremony in the Buñuel Theatre on May 22, followed by screenings of the winning films.
SHORT FILMS IN COMPETITION
The eleven shorts vying for the Palme d’or include:
Gabriel Abrantes’ “Arguments in Favor of Love (Disputes en Faveur de l’Amour)” (9 min.)
Adnan Al Rajeev’s “Ali” (15 min.)
Tawfeek Barhom’s provocatively titled “I’m Glad You’re Dead Now” (13 min.)
Arvin Belarmino and Kyla Danelle Romero’s “Agapito” (15 min.)
Sandra Desmazières’ “Fille de l’Eau” (15 min.)
Martine Froissard’s “Hypersensitive (Hypersensible)” (9 min.)
Grégoire Graesslin’s “Dammen” (15 min.)
Bálint Kenyères’ “The Spectacle” (15 min.)
Zhaoguang Luo and Shuhan Liao’s “Nvhai (Lili)” (14 min.)
Inês Nunes’ “A Solidão dos Lagartos (The Loneliness of Lizards)” (15 min.)
Dian Weys’ “Aasvoëls (Vultures)” (15 min.)
La Cinef, the festival’s student film showcase, selected 16 films (13 live-action, three animated) from a pool of 2,700 global submissions. The 2025 edition welcomes first-time participating institutions including Portugal’s Escola das Artes – UCP, Denmark’s Super16, and the Estonian Academy of Arts – marking Estonia’s festival debut.
LA CINEF SELECTION
The student films selected for La Cinef include:
Laura Anahory’s “O Pássaro de Dentro (The Bird From Within)” (Escola das Artes – UCP, Portugal, 5 min.)
Marc Camardons’ “Per Bruixa i Metzinera (The Sorceress Echo)” (ESCAC, Spain, 24 min.)
Juan Ignacio Ceballos’ “Tres (Three)” (UCINE, Argentina, 24 min.)
Helmi Donner’s “Matalapaine (The Lightning Rod)” (AALTO University, Finland, 21 min.)
Oumnia Hanader’s “Bimo” (CinéFabrique, France, 23 min.)
Joecar Hanna’s “Talk Me” (NYU, U.S., 19 min.)
Heo Gayoung’s “First Summer” (KAFA, South Korea, 30 min.)
Mikkel Bjørn Kehlert’s “Måske i Marts (Maybe in March)” (Super16, Denmark, 24 min.)
Natalia Mirzoyan’s “Winter in March” (Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonia, 16 min.)
Polina Piddubna’s “My Grandmother is a Skydiver” (Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf, Germany, 13 min.)
Qu Zhizheng’s “12 Moments Before the Flag-Raising Ceremony” (Beijing Film Academy, China, 16 min.)
Vida Skerk’s “Ether” (NFTS, U.K., 15 min.)
Andrei Tache-Codreanu’s “Fursecuri si Lapte (Milk and Cookies)” (UNATC “I. L. Caragiale”, Romania, 21 min.)
Miki Tanaka’s “Ginger Boy (Separated)” (ENBU Seminar, Japan, 48 min.)
Kokob Gebrehaweria Tesfay’s “A Doll Made Up of Clay” (Satyajit Ray Film & Television Institute, India, 24 min.)
Jules Vésigot-Wahl’s “Le Continent Somnambule (The Land of Slumber)” (La Fémis, France, 26 min.)
Ade broke through internationally with her cringe-comedy masterpiece “Toni Erdmann” (2016). The film competed for the Palme d’Or at Cannes and won the Fipresci Prize there before going on to receive an Oscar nomination for best foreign language film as the international category was known then.
