About Us

Independent Shorts Awards is an international short film festival, with red carpet screenings and Q&A sessions all year round and an annual awards event at Regal Cinemas LA Live, in Los Angeles.

Emerging projects booster

During the last 6 years, Independent Shorts Awards has been boosting several projects such as Oscar nominee “One Small Step” (USA), Oscar-longlisted animated short “Umbrella” (Brazil), Oscar-longlisted documentary short “After Skid Row” (USA), Oscar-longlisted live action short “Cognition” (UK), BAFTA winner “The Inescapable Arrival of Lazlo Petushki” (UK), and “One Last Last Heist” (Canada) acquired by Sony.

Among the big of the film industry

One of the fastest growing and world-leading LA-based international indie short film festivals, Independent Shorts Awards is proud of having among its past winners Academy Award winners Joel Harlow, Laura Dern, Nick Vallelonga, Rayka Zehtabchi, Robert Zemeckis, and Ross Kauffman, Academy Award nominees Andrew Chesworth, Bobby Pontillas, Chazz Palminteri, Diane Ladd, Eric Roberts, Janet McTeer, Michael Shannon, and Paul Giamatti, BAFTA winner Sven Werner, BAFTA nominee Aidan Gillen, Primetime Emmy winner Loretta Devine, Primetime Emmy nominees Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, and Mindy Sterling, Screen Actors Guild Awards winner Roger Bart and nominee Jennifer Morrison, as other notable such as Allisyn Snyder, Bonnie McKee, Danny Trejo, Harald Zwart, Jeff Blyth, Kevin Smith, Leven Rambin, Madison Wolfe, Michael Madsen, and William Baldwin.

Diversity and inclusion

IMDb qualifier Independent Shorts Awards is looking for independent projects from all genres, particularly low or no-budget ones, as well as from all countries, especially from those traditionally underrepresented in the global film industry.

Monthly competitions

Each monthly season, the submitted projects are judged by a random team of invited experts from academia and film industry, against a high standard of merit. The monthly award winners are considered for the annual nominations. All annual nominees are screened at the annual event.

So, EVERY MONTH, Independent Shorts Awards establishes a comprehensive hierarchy of the most important films in the festival circuit, awarding a considerable number of projects in several different categories. A monthly breakdown, listed by IMDb, that allows you to be, at the same time, in a TRADITIONAL ANNUAL FESTIVAL competing for a spot among the world’s best short films of the year to be screened in Los Angeles.

Annual international stage

Our annual stage, showcasing some of the best independent short films curated from around the world (in average 70/80 films from a pool of about 5000 submissions), provides a platform for emerging directors, writers, and actors from different countries, and attracts a diverse audience of film aficionados, passionate storytellers, and filmmaking executives of every stripe to downtown Los Angeles. Most of the films have their cast and crews at Regal LA Live, coming from Europe, Asia, Oceania, South America, and different states of US.

To learn more, visit our page in Filmfreeway.

Submissions are accepted through FilmFreeway.

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