Akbank Short Film Festival was held for the first time in 2004. It has developed further over the years into one of the leading arts and culture events in Istanbul with an increasingly diverse programme. The festival aims to encourage short film production, to deliver the films to audiences, to support new filmmakers, to champion short film internationally, to provide a debate platform for short film within a festival culture and to establish a festival for cinema-lovers to enjoy.
In addition to the national and international short film competitions, the festival includes various workshops, interviews and master classes and thus acts as an experience-sharing platform between cinema professionals and festivalgoers. Akbank Short Festival, which takes place in Akbank Sanat every year for ten days, is free of charge for all the events. The festival is composed of “Festival Shorts,” “World Shorts,” “Short to Feature,” “Experiences,” “Documentary Film,” “Perspective,” “Special Screening” and “Forum” sections. Films that have competed at world’s leading film festivals such as Cannes, Berlin, Venice are presented to audiences every year. The “Forum” section, which was opened for the first time in 2017, aims to support short films from the scriptwriting stage, organizes trainings for project development and a short film screenplay contest for production support.
So far the festival has featured valuable artists such as Abbas Kiarostami, Reha Erdem, Jessica Woodworth, Yeşim Ustaoğlu, Jafar Panahi, Ahmet Uluçay, Tayfun Pirselimoğlu, Coşkun Aral, Barış Pirhasan with master classes and film screenings.
Every year, with "Akbank Short Film Festival in Universities" event, the festival reaches various cities of Turkey other than Istanbul. The award winning films are screened to the students of universities in Turkey.