Benefits of Watching Short Films and Best Short Films to Watch in 2025
By Birgül Tombul
Why Should You Watch Short Films?
Short films are the art of telling cinema's story in an intense and concise way. It's a fact that watching short films will add different dimensions to our perspective. A short film is created by briefly and profoundly processing the story and message intended to be conveyed in a feature film.
The short film you watch doesn't easily leave your mind. This is because the film's content is concentrated on the message. The intensity of the message intended to be conveyed is not allowed to be dispersed with unnecessary and time-consuming elements. Short films exist in our lives in many ways.
Somehow, we come across them through various platforms, and they capture our interest. Short films have a very special audience. This niche audience follows and supports all developments related to short films, whether on platforms or at festivals. So what advantage does watching short films offer us? Let's talk about some of these.
Saves Time
Many people may not find time to watch feature-length films due to their length, or they may need to set aside a special time slot. This doesn't seem very possible in the intense time period we live in.
Short films, usually lasting between 5 and 30 minutes, can be watched even in the middle of a busy day. Even if you have time constraints, the short film you'll watch offers an impressive story experience. It provides relaxation and causes you to have a calmer day.
Brings Out Your Creativity
Short films are among the most creative projects in the cinema world. You have to impress the audience in a short time, which requires creativity. Thus, directors can usually bring out this creativity by using advanced techniques, different narrative methods, and unusual story structures. This improves and diversifies our way of thinking about various aspects of life.
Every day in society, we experience events that are diverse and impactful. These events we experience can be simple day-to-day matters, or they can be serious problems that deeply affect a large part of society. In fact, there can be many such problems. Because where there are humans, there are expectations. Short films expose these expectations, problems, or beauties by easily producing many films without falling into the clumsiness of feature films.
With these produced films, public opinion can be formed in society and solutions can be pointed out. Therefore, the short film is especially preferred due to its ease of production and meeting with the audience.
Exploring Independent Cinema
Short films are often important examples of independent cinema. Independent directors and producers usually create creative and original designs with limited budgets. Watching short films allows you to discover new and exciting names in the cinema world.
It's a fact that whether it's Western Cinema, Eastern Cinema, or Hollywood, they all represent a certain view. Short films, however, can make a choice independent of these imposing mentalities. They can convey any subject to the audience in any style, with creative techniques, without being forced into any limitations.
As we all know, some topics can be taboo in some societies or geographies. Sometimes, for political reasons, you may even face situations where you can't find a venue when you deal with certain topics. Short films never have such restrictions. They can process the subject and easily publish it through platforms. But we should also add this here: Short film doesn't mean lawlessness. Short film is a genre that can use its freedom area to its limits but is bound by universal ethical rules. It should not contain criminal elements.
Helps Delve into the Depths of Storytelling
Short films require the ability to tell an effective story in a short time. Therefore, watching short films helps you understand how a part of the story is selected and how events are intensified. This causes the viewer to easily get involved in the story.
The main idea and message hidden within the whole feature film is easily conveyed in a short film. Also, the production phase becomes quite easy for animation and documentary genres within the short category.
Offers an Opportunity to Get to Know Different Cultures
Short filmmakers often draw inspiration from their local cultures or social issues. This means introducing the social codes of different cultures to members of another culture.
Today, through short films, a lot of information about European, American, Far Eastern, etc. cultures is conveyed. Even for someone who has never visited these places, there is a familiarity with different cultures. Now that watched culture is familiar in one way.
Best Short Films to Watch in 2025
Wicked Girl is an animated drama with quite heavy content that you will watch. Our protagonist is a little girl who goes to her grandfather and grandmother's place for summer vacation. Her wonderful days spent with them are turned upside down by a despicable attack. The film essentially takes its subject from a drama that none of us can bear but somehow cannot prevent from happening - child abuse. We see how the child tries to make sense of this. How such a traumatic situation, which even an adult would struggle to overcome or might not overcome at all, is interpreted with the most unexpected and abstract things through the child's eyes. I particularly want to emphasize one point: let's try not to take our eyes off our children. This is a topic where one wants to express a lot but can say very little. I definitely recommend watching the film.
Flocky is a wonderful animated film that you can only watch on Cineshort. I must say, it's one of the best animations I've watched in a long time. It contains quite emotional elements. A mother, whether her baby is born alive or dead, always carries that special state of motherhood inside her. We have a mother who learns she's going to have a baby, and a very special bond forms between her and her baby. Spending time with her is an amazing feeling. They're having a lot of fun, indeed. Then she realizes she has lost her baby. That emotional disconnect is beautifully conveyed in the animation. Another important and beautiful point is that we watch this entire film against the backdrop of a wonderful winter landscape. I recommend this wonderful animated film to anyone who wants to watch a beautiful animation accompanied by a train journey.
Leylak is a wonderful drama that you will enjoy watching. Nadir Sarıbacak impresses with his acting. Our protagonist's profession is a bit different from the professions we are used to. A grave digger. His wife in the hospital has died due to Covid, but he somehow cannot tell this to his daughter. His daughter wants to go to her mother, and she has even bought her a bouquet of lilac, her favorite flower. But they somehow can't go to her mother, or rather the father finds a way not to take her. The next day, they set off to attend the mother's funeral. The ups and downs, the struggles in the film are quite impressive. You should definitely watch the film. It has become a very important production, especially in terms of reminding us of the intense tragedy of the Covid period.
Patision Avenue is a wonderful drama that you will enjoy watching immensely. Our protagonist is an actress and mother. The film depicts the events that develop during a phone conversation while she walks on the road and does voice exercises, and a sudden big change. You can clearly see in the film the woman's entrapment between the role assigned to her in social roles and her profession, and her need for help. The difficulty of explaining something to a small child, the helplessness there, is beautifully handled. It even induces anxiety and tension in the viewer while watching. We, too, have experienced such chaos in some periods of our lives. Our day starts calmly and beautifully, but suddenly takes on a completely different form, and we can't handle it. Another aspect of the film is that we witness the events by following our protagonist only from behind, as if we were in a computer game. The parallel between the change in her hair and the change in her mood has incredibly increased the impressiveness. I found the film quite beautiful and impressive, I definitely recommend it to everyone.
Do No Harm is a beautiful Far Eastern film that you will watch, both emotional and full of action. I can say it's perfect for you especially if you have a special interest in Far Eastern fighting and like action. A mother and a doctor. What should you do if your patient is both your blackmailer and your patient? The film conveys to us the very big problem in the world of pedophilia and child trafficking in a very impressive intensity. It draws you into the film and makes you conflicted. Only at this point, I can offer a small criticism: there are too many bloody scenes. But I think this might have bothered me as a personal preference. A very good film for enthusiasts.
Nobu is one of the most sympathetic films you can watch. Actually, the film is a migration story. Cultural differences and the adaptation process are beautifully handled. The need to find people from your own culture in a different society and spend time with them is handled in a delicate way. It also shows how a behavior from your culture can have a completely different meaning in a different culture. Our protagonist gives tips on both leaving and overcoming the difficulties of adapting to where you go. The support he gives to his daughter's production and development is very special. There's a constant smile on his face, but his answer to his daughter's "are you happy?" question at the end seems like a mirror of his inner world. I strongly recommend it to those who haven't watched it, and I wish those who will watch it a pleasant viewing.
Mondo Domino is a wonderful animation that you will watch with curiosity. The biggest task of this animation is to confront us with our own absurdities. It tells the story of many workers in preparation for a fashion show who happily cut down trees while singing loudly, things getting out of hand, and the disaster that befalls the world. The feeling the film evoked in me was, "What are we doing in this cacophony?" We don't hear, see, or care about each other, and we just do that "big" job given to us. The damage we do to the environment? We'll think about that later! The film definitely deserves to be watched and rated highly.
Tribes is a fantastic short action film that you will watch with excitement. Our protagonists decide on a robbery in the metro but can't decide who to rob. I can say it's the best social message film I've watched in a long time. It's an impressive film that reminds us how artificial the things that separate us are and that we are all irreplaceable parts of the whole. It reminded me that no one is superior to anyone else, the artificiality of classifications, and how shallow ethnocentric thinking is. I definitely recommend the film.
Paranoia is one of the short animations with a very current topic and intense content. It's about three minutes long, an impressive film. Both in connection with the film and in general, each of us is intensely affected by various adversities happening in the world and our country. Written-visual media, social media brings before us negative, even traumatic events that we would encounter in a day in our normal life and leave us helpless in the face of events that we cannot overcome, that we can do nothing about. And because we are constantly exposed to these news, we are caught in what Gebner describes as the "Mean World Syndrome." We perceive the world as more insecure than it really is and we are afraid. Sometimes we even come to expect evil from the most unrelated people. Paranoia is a beautiful animation with deep messages.
I'M OK is a quite impressive political drama that you will watch with great curiosity. Our protagonist is a soldier who left his loved ones and went to the front for great! ideals during the period of World War I in 1915. We can very easily see all his psychological transitions during that process. Being an animation, our director has been able to create that effect in a more impressive tone. The subject of the film especially affected me with its timing with the tense political ground we are experiencing today. War, regardless of its reason, is a concept that I don't want to have a place in my perspective. Because the innocent people, families, spouses left behind, parents, and most painfully, children bear the brunt of the conflict created under the pretext of abstract and idealized thoughts and lofty goals. That is, this phenomenon called war has a rather concrete counterpart. I sincerely wish that the concept of war, which we have carried on from the past, would now disappear and that humanitarian agreement and communication ways befitting our age would increase. We need to clearly perceive that we have no choice but to really try to understand each other, to respect different lives and thoughts. Returning to the film, the film is, as I said, quite impressive. Especially the last scene really locked me to the screen for a long time and made me think a lot. I definitely recommend watching it.
Jay is a touching biographical documentary that will make your heart ache. Our protagonist is someone who was born with a special condition, was subjected to abuse and neglect, faced difficulties and pressures related to his gender. He was stuck in the swamp of alcohol and drugs. Then an experience he had caused a transformation and break in his life. A completely different talent inside him emerged. It's a quite impressive documentary. While compassion and love could solve so many problems, when you withhold these feelings, you can cause traumatic results. Another issue that I think is very important is that when harm comes from someone close to you, it hurts much more. I definitely recommend watching this film which shows that life and people's lives are not just our assumptions.
My Stuffed Granny is a beautiful animation that you will enjoy watching. Our protagonist's grandmother is quite appetitious and her pension is the only source of income for the poor family. No matter what they do, it's not possible to feed the grandmother, in fact, the grandmother might even give her life on this appetitious path :)) Financial difficulty is such a big problem, especially if your family is crowded and you don't have the assurance of finding healthy food for them at every meal, one can really feel helpless. Returning to our film, the film has a very entertaining perspective. It also has nice advice about being thrifty. I definitely recommend watching it. You know what they say, "If life gives you oranges, make jam!" 😄
Pine is a nice drama that you will watch with interest. Our protagonist is a father who works as a taxi driver and struggles financially. What happens if a close relative gets rich through illegitimate ways and your family, seeing this, doesn't share the same values as you and, tired of poverty, asks for the same welfare from you? The answer to the question is in the film. We experience various difficulties in our lives. And if we are not on the same plane with the people who are closest to us, who share our lives, if we don't carry the same values, we also have to bear the burden of this, and this is even more wounding. As the poet says, "Stones like roses rain down on my head, especially the rose of a friend wounds me." I recommend watching the film!
