Shorts Showcase: miniature masterpieces from the Klassiki collection

Shorts Showcase: miniature masterpieces from the Klassiki collection

Size doesn’t always matter. Explore our collection of short films: from Hungary to Uzbekistan, animation to documentary, classic and contemporary. Featuring festival titles streaming online for the first time, as well as restored classics from Sergei Parajanov and Sándor Reisenbüchler.

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Shorts Showcase: miniature masterpieces from the Klassiki collection
  • A Dead Marriage

    Directed by Michał Toczek • 2022 • Poland

    Michał Toczek’s charming Polish short weaves warm-hearted romance out of the lonely tedium of gig work and big-budget filmmaking. Downtrodden Filip (Sebastian Stankiewicz) is a professional film extra who specialises in playing dead bodies. On the set of...

  • Chornobyl 22

    Directed by Oleksiy Radynski • 2023 • Ukraine

    In the early days of the Russian invasion in 2022, the Chernobyl nuclear plant was used as a staging post on the road to Kyiv. Oleksiy Radynski’s Chornobyl 22 documents their brief, terrifying occupation of the site. Interviews with plant staff who w...

  • Qirim

    Directed by Kateryna Khramtsova • 2023 • Ukraine

    Kateryna Khramtsova’s documentary short Qirim – the native Tatar name for Crimea – is a portrait of Antonina Romanova: a non-binary performance artist turned mortar technician in the Ukrainian army. Incorporating animation and split-screen techniq...

  • Aralkum

    Directed by Daniel Asadi Faezi and Mila Zhluktenko • 2022 • Uzbekistan

    The fate of the Aral Sea, which spans the Uzbek-Kazakh border, is one of the twentieth century’s greatest environmental disasters. Ravaged by Soviet industrial policy, this once abundant inland ocean has long since become the...

  • Comrade Policeman

    Directed by Assel Aushakimova • 2021 • Kazakhstan

    Assel Aushakimova (Welcome to the USA) shows why she is one of the most acute observers of contemporary Kazakh society with this droll satirical short. When a local reporter from state television is sent to capture a PR stunt from the Kazakh poli...

  • Hakob Hovnatanyan

    Directed by Sergei Parajanov • 1967 • Armenia/USSR

    After completing Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and before embarking on The Colour of Pomegranates, the great Sergei Parajanov produced this exquisite miniature about the work of Hakob Hovnatanyan, a nineteenth-century Armenian portraitist rever...

  • The Kidnapping of the Sun and Moon

    Directed by Sándor Reisenbüchler • 1968 • Hungary

    Inspired by Carpathian folklore and based on the epic poem by Ferenc Juhász, this mesmerising animated short by the great Sándor Reisenbüchler imagines a world destroyed and then rebuilt. A fearsome, seven-headed dragon swallows the sun and moon,...

  • Jirtdan

    Directed by Aghanaghi Akhundov and Yalchin Efendiyev • 1969 • USSR/Azerbaijan

    Produced at the start of the golden age of Azerbaijani animation, Akhundov and Efendiyev’s Jirtdan (meaning “small” or “dwarf”) is a magical little treat in which the titular tiny hero and his brothers must outwit the ...

  • The Heron and the Crane

    Directed by Yuri Norstein • 1974 • USSR/Russia

    The Heron and the Crane is a humorous little tale of amorous indecision and self-destruction from animator supreme Yuri Norstein. The titular animals are engaged in a dance of romantic attraction and rejection, whimsical but melancholy. A collaborat...

  • Hedgehog in the Fog

    Directed by Yuri Norstein • 1976 • USSR/Russia

    Directed by master artist Yuri Norstein, Hedgehog in the Fog is one of the world’s most beloved animated classics. The film follows a hedgehog as he sets off to look at the stars with his friend, the bear cub. But, distracted by a beautiful white ho...

  • The Battle of Kherzenets

    Directed by Yuri Norstein and Ivan Ivanov-Vano • 1971 • USSR/Russia

    This animated short is based on the Russian legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh, which was reputed to have disappeared under the waters of Lake Svetloyar to escape an attack by the Mongols. This medieval folk tale was adapted...