Florian Fernandez named Head of the Short Film Hub

The Drama International Short Film Festival is pleased to announce that Florian Fernández, Industry coordinator for the Short Film Corner | Rendez-vous Indsutry at the Festival de Cannes.

The Oscar® qualified Drama International Short Film Festival continues its steadily upward path, with the new mayor of Drama, George Papadopoulos, as president and Petros Paraskevaidis as vice president of DISFF. The new leaders of the Cultural Organization of the Drama International Short Film Festival, along with the artistic director Yannis Sakaridis, welcome to the festival family an important and internationally renowned film professional who will contribute to the festival’s wider outreach, strengthening its international dimension and impact.

The Short Film Hub aims to connect talented directors, screenwriters and producers with the international and national film industry. It functions as a space of creation, continuous exploration, and freedom, through which the young creators will have the opportunity to meet well-known film professionals and learn about the countless possibilities of their art, promoting a film project, developing a screenplay and building a network of contacts.

Every September, professional meetings, workshops, seminars, and endless discussions transform the city of Drama and the Drama International Short Film Festival into the perfect destination for every film professional who loves short films.

According to Florian Fernández, «It is a tremendous joy to join Drama International Short Film Festival, in a country very dear to my heart and as part of an inspiring team carried by a lot of passionate, dynamic and talented people!

I’m impatient to pursue the effort newly initiated in 2023 and give more space to the Short Film Hub, a central platform aiming at developing industry opportunities for short films and their makers. Beyond the screenings of the selected short films, the HUB – standing for Harmony | Unity | Bravery – is a key initiative to forge bonds, to bring more individual guidance, and to focus on talent development as well as on the support & the travel of projects. With the ambition of slowly widening the possibilities for filmmakers from Greece and abroad, this year’s program will explore new paths of cooperation and will celebrate the many inspiring ways of creating through the short film format.

To celebrate this new impulse for the Short Film Hub, we are glad to introduce a new partnership between DISFF and Talking Shorts! This online magazine dedicated to short films aims to produce universally readable content that can inspire, cultivate, and educate a broad range of audiences, from students and scholars to non-cinephile readers.

A new collaboration that makes a lot of sense for a festival that has been created by filmmakers and for filmmakers, and who puts discussions & creation at the heart of its ambitions!».

Bio

Holding a Master’s degree in Film Studies, Florian coordinates the various industry initiatives elaborated as part of the Short Film Corner | Rendez-vous Industry. This four-day forum organized by the Festival de Cannes aims to highlight short film forms, emerging talents and facilitate the interactions between the filmmakers and the industry. Florian is also involved in the pre-selection of short films for Montreal Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, for the Doc Shorts section of SXSW, and formerly took part in Encounters Film Festival pre-selection team (2021-2023). He yearly collaborates as part of The Short Film Lab training program and the European Short Pitch reading committee. Since 2023, he has partnered with Protest Studios to take care of the festival distribution & sales of a handful of short films carried by unique voices.
In 2024, he has joined Drama Int’l Short Film Festival as the Head of the Short Film Hub.