Inside the world’s most impor­tant (and acces­si­ble) short film festival

Until recent­ly, my most vivid mem­o­ry from the Cler­mont-Fer­rand Inter­na­tion­al Short Film Fes­ti­val was of a film, screened in a pro­gramme spe­cial­ly curat­ed for local school chil­dren like me, in which a scary look­ing man in a green suit unleashed chaos on the streets of Tokyo by throw­ing grenades around, killing peo­ple. The year was 2009, I had just turned 16, and on that day I decid­ed that short films were not for me.

When I became inter­est­ed in world cin­e­ma a few years lat­er (I was a late bloomer), I realised just how lucky I had been then to be intro­duced in this way to none oth­er than Mr Merde, played by Denis Lavant, best known for his appear­ance in Leos Carax’s Holy Motors. The char­ac­ter made his first appear­ance in Carax’s seg­ment from the 2008 port­man­teau film Tokyo!, with the two oth­er parts direct­ed by Michel Gondry and Bong Joon-ho.

Attend­ing the fes­ti­val for the first time as a pro­fes­sion­al crit­ic this year con­firmed what count­less oth­ers have told me over the years: Cler­mont ISFF is the best place to dis­cov­er orig­i­nal and inno­v­a­tive film­mak­ing tal­ent. In 2013, Xavier Legrand won the Grand Prix of the Nation­al Com­pe­ti­tion for Just Before Los­ing Every­thing, lat­er nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar; the breath-tak­ing short pre­lud­ed his equal­ly thrilling debut fea­ture Custody.

Like­wise, before Ladj Ly seduced Cannes with his first full-length film, Les Mis­érables, he was award­ed for his short of the same name in Cler­mont in 2017. This year, Yves Piat’s Audi­ence Award-win­ner Nef­ta Foot­ball Club was among the nom­i­nees at the Acad­e­my Awards. Not for noth­ing is the fes­ti­val regard­ed as the world’s most impor­tant event ded­i­cat­ed to short-form cinema.

But the fes­ti­val isn’t pri­mar­i­ly a spring­board for direc­tors look­ing to make their first fea­tures, and any­one think­ing that the short for­mat is only the prod­uct of lim­it­ed means would be forced to change their minds after spend­ing a few days in Cler­mont. Besides the three com­pet­i­tive strands – Inter­na­tion­al Com­pe­ti­tion, Nation­al Com­pe­ti­tion and Labo, ded­i­cat­ed to exper­i­men­tal work – the fes­ti­val presents two focus­es each year, one of them explor­ing the devel­op­ment of the art­form in a spe­cif­ic coun­try; the oth­er the treat­ment of a par­tic­u­lar topic.

This year’s coun­try in focus was Poland, with a care­ful­ly curat­ed selec­tion of films span­ning the last decade, while the choice of top­ic was ​‘Rur­al Ways’, which proved par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar with audi­ences, who were giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to rate each of the pro­grammes they saw via the festival’s app.

The fes­ti­val does not sep­a­rate doc­u­men­tary, nar­ra­tive film or ani­ma­tion, which makes for eclec­tic indi­vid­ual pro­grammes, even with­in a sin­gle sec­tion – a choice that seems to bear fruits, as the fes­ti­val has grown expo­nen­tial­ly since its cre­ation in 1982. Near­ly every screen­ing I attend­ed was full, with atten­dees of all ages talk­ing enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly about the films they’d seen while queu­ing out­side the dozen venues in the city.

At one of them, named La Jetée after the Chris Mark­er film, four out of the five shorts com­pris­ing a carte blanche pro­gramme were shown on film. While one of them – the bril­liant, dark­ly com­ic A Won­der­ful Love, direct­ed by Fab­rice du Welz and shot by Benoît Debie – proved less pop­u­lar than its more gen­tle coun­ter­parts, unsat­is­fied view­ers could take solace in the fact that if they didn’t like a par­tic­u­lar short, anoth­er would be along soon.

Out of the hun­dreds of films shown at the fes­ti­val, I man­aged to catch the win­ner of the Inter­na­tion­al Com­pe­ti­tion: the absorb­ing and kinet­ic Da Yie, from Ghan­ian direc­tor Antho­ny Nti. It was the best of the recent pro­duc­tions I saw, and in its com­bi­na­tion of broad humour with cut­ting social com­men­tary, it beau­ti­ful­ly echoes my favourite of the old­er films I watched at the fes­ti­val, Le Franc, a 1994 offer­ing from cel­e­brat­ed Sene­galese direc­tor Djib­ril Diop Mam­bé­ty (uncle of Mati Diop).

With tick­ets for indi­vid­ual pro­grammes of five to six shorts cost­ing only €4, an intel­li­gent struc­ture that lev­els the play­ing field between films new and old from all hori­zons, and a selec­tion of invari­ably high qual­i­ty, the Cler­mont ISFF con­sis­tent­ly makes this most dar­ing, inven­tive and some­times intim­i­dat­ing art­form seem the most fun and acces­si­ble of all. It’s a won­der we’re not all watch­ing short films all the time.