The 47th edition of the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival begins on 31 January and will continue to showcase myriad short films for its usual enthusiastic and sold-out audiences. Alongside these screenings, the short-film industry will descend upon the French town to take part in the Short Film Market, which begins on 3 February. Over 3,600 industry guests representing festivals, sales agents, distributors and – of course – filmmakers will be on hand to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the market.

We spoke to Julie Rousson, general delegate of the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, to explore what the market has to offer this year and how the short-film industry is adapting to challenging times.

Cineuropa: It’s the 40th edition of the Clermont-Ferrand Market. Is there anything special planned?
Julie Rousson: We wanted to mark the fact that the market has evolved quite a lot, especially over the past ten years, and is open to other short formats aside from just short film. So we’re starting a new XR programme this year, dedicated to immersive projects – it could be VR, it could be video games – and we’ll also tackle the subject of AI. The idea is to state that all kinds of short formats come from the same starting point, as it’s a creative process. [We also want to look at] how we can enable the short-film industry and the immersive industry to get together, to learn from each other. In addition, we’ll look at how VR films can find their place in the short-film circuit with all the festivals attending the market.

It’s the first year, so it will be based primarily on the immersive French industry, and in 2026, we’ll open it up more internationally. It’s something that the MEDIA programme supports as well, and it’s increased its support for the next two years of the market. It will be more than panels: it will be networking sessions, and immersive projects will be pitched at Euro Connection. So, it will have more of an industry aspect than it used to.

How do you think the Short Film Market represents the state of the short-film industry? There seems to be an ebb and flow of who can attend each year.
Something we can be sure of is that the cultural industry is struggling everywhere. It has been for some time in some specific geographical areas, but it’s coming to Europe, too, and it’s making us more aware of what’s happening everywhere else. So, there have been a lot of countries coming and going – for example, Japan was back last year, but they won’t be attending this year. But we have a delegation from Thailand this year, and we’ll welcome a Lebanese booth. Also, there’s the UK booth, which we worked on for some time because – at one point – it was the biggest booth, given that the UK is one of the biggest short-film producers in Europe. Due to both COVID-19 and Brexit, the UK presence struggled, but we’ve finally managed to bring a lot of good energy to the table, and they have done some amazing work.

The short-film industry is a very fragile one, and every year, it’s difficult to include some countries that are struggling with finance. But also, space is limited. We have some people who want to come but can’t because of the space issue.

How do you think the short-film industry can weather the storm?
We are small, but we are welcoming for newcomers. We are working together, not against each other, and we are stronger together. What COVID-19 taught us was that connection, talking and sharing are key parts of our industry. Of course, online events were amazing in keeping this connection alive, but what we saw was that as soon as people could get back together, they did.

What I see in France is that we’ve had lots of newcomers enter the regional councils, and they don’t know their region very well. They don’t know the cultural industry well, and they make judgements based on misconstrued ideas about what short film is. They don’t know how important it is to nurture the beginning [of a career] so that they can also have something good at the end. When we have new people in the industry visit the festival for the first time, they say, “Oh, I didn’t know it was like that; it’s so big, and you have so much stuff happening at the market.” It means we constantly need to explain things because the new politicians don’t know – or they don’t care – and we don’t have the reach that the feature-film industry has. The short-film industry is not economically as huge as the feature-film industry, but it’s where everyone starts. If you cut short the beginning, how do you reach the end?