Yorkshire Short Film Competition

8 short films made in Yorkshire including live-action fiction, documentary and animation in a programme celebrating and showcasing the best filmmaking in the region.

Practical Anarchy

A defiant history of Bradford’s 1in12 Club, the member-owned venue that became a beacon for protest and punk subcultures throughout the ’80s and ’90s. Long-standing club members reflect on the victories, struggles and the evolving destiny of the collective. Yorkshire Premiere | Michael McCabe | UK | 2025 | 13 mins | English

Pay As You Go

A struggling tenant wants to escape his Pay-As-You-Go Life Tariff, but must first confront a relentlessly cheerful Customer Support officer conducting a routine “Life Utility Check-Up”. A Kafka-esque comedy set in a world where everything is chargeable. Yorkshire Premiere | Tom Diffenthal | UK | 2026 | 10 mins | English

Wuthering Hearts

O love! O achin’ love! In this perfect blend of emo and romance, Helena (a teen with a heavy case of the “morbs”) struggles to navigate her first romance when various obstacles get in the way of her beloved Bernard and his many odes to her beauty. Laura Jayne Hodkin | UK | 2025 | 3 mins | English

The Witches of Pool Bottom

Perfectly fitting the remit of our Yorkshire Competition to support young filmmakers, this film confronts, with increasing absurdity, societal expectations of female self-surveillance and judgement, in a humorous, surreal short exploring teenage body-image. Yorkshire Premiere | Ava Bounds | UK | 2025 | 7 mins | English

Claw & Order

When a sudden and unexplained extinction wipes out Whitby’s lobster stocks, the local community is thrown into crisis. Fishermen and scientists must join forces to restore an ecosystem on the brink, with a little help from their hard-shelled heroes. World Premiere | Mikey Sneddon | UK | 2026 | 13 mins | English

Nowt

This dark drama highlights the pressures of girlhood through Bailey, with big, beautiful lashes and very little confidence, a rebellious teen who is led astray by an older man. But what begins as forbidden love violently morphs into a traumatising situation. Yorkshire Premiere | Milda Baginskaitė | UK | 2026 | 14 mins | English

Five Minute Brides

Twice a year, Skipton seamstress Mandy Abramson invites women of any age, shape or size into her bridal shop to have a wedding dress-up day of their own. Mandy’s simple act of generosity elicits moving stories that this documentary compassionately captures. Yorkshire Premiere | Jacqueline Maxted | UK | 2025 | 16 mins | English

Blue Hour

Before departing for university, a teenager wanders the Yorkshire moors for one last summer afternoon with her besties. Capturing their final moments of adolescence on film, she grapples with the looming transition and the fear of leaving everything she knows. Kate Graham | UK | 2026 | 13 mins | English

Content Guidance: Contains scenes of physical and emotional abuse.