SeaShorts Competition (SSC)
The main competition features works by Southeast Asian and diaspora practitioners who will compete for the Grand Prix of the festival: the SeaShorts Award. The competition includes works from established mid-career filmmakers and artists, up-and-coming filmmakers and artists who have made prior short films, and exceptional student works, usually thesis projects, from across the region. The 8th edition of SeaShorts presents over 20 titles from across 8 Southeast Asian countries that each grapple with an absence in their context. From an experimental ethnography of the Burmese community in Singapore, to a young Cambodian man’s existential homecoming in a landscape that has irrevocably changed, these works reflect diverse considerations of the rapidly shifting terrain of Southeast Asia across both material and immaterial dimensions.
Malaysian Open Competition (MOC)
The national competition features works by Malaysian filmmakers and films made in Malaysia, vying for the Malaysian Open Competition Award. The lineup consists of 20 films from graduate and postgraduate students from institutions in and out of Malaysia, and up-and-coming filmmakers in the Malaysian film industry, expressing a diverse spectrum of feelings of the Malaysian experience. From longing to belonging, from discovery of oneself to mutative metamorphosis, the works reflect the words and emotions left unsaid – only to find it manifest in light and shadows. The student works in this lineup are also eligible for the Malaysian Student Film Award.
RE:View: These Loud Silences
These Loud Silences is an offering for the gaps that exist between what the archive enables, disables, and lets fall through the cracks. Gently tracing the fissures of history across both the personal and the public realm, the experimental nature of the works in this programme highlights both the fuzzy malleability of memories, but also the resilience of their ability to capture the truth of the moment.
Shorts+: Blossoms Unbound
Blossoms Unbound examines experiences of womanhood across different stages of life. Exploring themes such as love, family, friendship and personal growth through the lens of diverse women, this programme offers a closer look at how things like societal expectations, relationships, and self-discovery shape their lives and journeys.
Beyond Indian Shores: Malaysian Tamil Tides
To be part of a diaspora is to live between worlds, carrying the weight of where you come from while navigating the terrain of where you are. Malaysian Tamil Tides seeks to explore the collective experience of the Indian diaspora in Malaysia by focusing on the most intimate and personal stories. From a village boy’s journey to the city, to the eerie unraveling of a possessed girlfriend, a group of drink buddies objectifying a gangster’s wife, a neurodivergent girl navigating her apartment’s confines, a curious bunch of Mamak boys investigating who punched their friend, and memories of a father’s love for cinema— each narrative illuminates the life that the Malaysian Indian diaspora has created in the spaces between belonging and longing.
HEATSEEKER
Heatseeker highlights works by active students and recent graduates in Malaysia. Selected from 26 short films nominated by 7 different film schools, the formation of sidebar represents a turn towards the roots and soils of filmmaking: showing the lineup of 10 short films developed under various film education institutions with diverse schools of thought.
Heatseeker: Japan Edition
In collaboration with Japan Foundation Kuala Lumpur, Heatseeker Japan turns our gaze to a very specific slice of Japanese student films. In this programme we show two very contrasting films, one trained on traditional storytelling structure and another very reflexive and avoids conventions – showcasing the contemporary duality of Japanese student films.