‘Hei Dong Dong’ (Dark Channel, China 2025) by Yu Zhe has won the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury in the International Competition at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival 2026. The film was also awarded the Main Prize of the Festival Jury. The Grand Prize of the City of Oberhausen went to ‘Opera’ (Croatia 2026) by Igor Zelić, who also received the International Film Critics’ Prize (FIPRESCI). The Ecumenical Jury in the Children’s and Youth Film Competition awarded its Prize to ‘Just Jools’ (Belgium 2025) by Ezra Verbist. The Ecumenical Jury awarded Commendations to ‘wolno, szybko, wolno’ (slow, fast, slow, Poland 2025) by Jagoda Czarnek in the International Competition and to ‘Jésus Marie Joseph’ (France 2025) by Patxi Meerman in the Children’s and Youth Film Competition.
The festival, which in 2026 was held for the second time under the direction of Madeleine Bernstorff and Susannah Polheim, opened on 28 April paying tribute to the recently deceased Alexander Kluge, spokesperson for the group that, in the ‘Oberhausen Manifesto’ of 1962, programmatically proclaimed the death of ‘Dad’s cinema’ and thus gave impetus to the New German Cinema, to which Kluge himself made a seminal contribution with his feature film debut ‘Abschied von gestern’ (English title: 'Yesterday Girl'), which was awarded the Silver Lion at its premiere in Venice in 1966.
Alongside other competition sections (German and NRW Competitions, Music Video/MuVi Award), the programme of more than 500 films included a considerable number of thematically focused series. The main theme was the question, raised anew by the rise of AI-generated images, of the relationship between reality and fiction in (documentary) film, under the title ‘based on true events?’. The spectrum of contributions compiled under this focus ranged from the beginnings of film history to the present day, and from propaganda-oriented films to the questioning of the very concept of reality.
“What’s Left” showcased political films from the 1970s and 1980s, whilst “Reisegefährten” presented unusual forms of recent episodic film, bringing together short films by various directors. ‘Frühjahr 1933’ (Spring 1933) commemorated a film of the same title by Paul Seligmann, shot in secret following the National Socialists’ seizure of power and recently rediscovered, as well as two works from 1932 by the painter and film club activist Ella Bergmann-Michel, who collaborated closely with him. Retrospectives were dedicated to Linda Bilda (Austria), Charlotte Pryce (USA), Gernot Wieland (Austria) and the collective Les films de la maison (Belgium). With a special programme the Short Film Festival paid tribute to Hilke Doering, the long-standing director of the International Competition who recently passed away.