Roma Short Film Festival was founded in 2020 by several Iranian and Italian artists. From the very beginning, the festival’s aim was to act as a bridge: introducing Iranian short films to Italian cinema lovers and showcasing Italian cinema to Iranian film enthusiasts.
Over time, this mission grew and began to encompass a much broader range of countries. The festival started modestly by organizing small screenings in both countries and introducing filmmakers from each side to one another. Gradually, the number of non-Italian filmmakers increased, and the event gained a truly international dimension.
Today, filmmakers from all over the world submit their works to the Roma Short Film Festival, and we continue our efforts to serve as a bridge connecting Asian film audiences with European ones.
The festival aims to create an opportunity for emerging filmmakers. Our goal is to support low budget and underground films that create new experiences and narrate unique stories with limited resources. Understanding how filmmakers around the world work, how young filmmakers get creative to get past the obstacles of production, and how their attempts can lead to a new form of cinema are among the things we care about. We strive to play a small role in the emergence of the new generation in the world of independent filmmaking by helping young filmmakers, actors, cinematographers, editors and producers to be heard and to get their messages across.
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The Roma Short Film Festival, Worldwide
We are proud to announce that the Roma Short Film Festival, through inter-festival connections across the globe, has the opportunity to screen accepted films in a different country each time. This global tour of the Roma Short Film Festival provides filmmakers with the chance to share their works with a broader audience—viewers from all over the world, not just Europe. Our focus is on countries with a more diverse audience. We are thrilled to announce that the films of this edition of the Roma Short Film Festival (June 2025) will be screened in Asia, in the Middle East.