Las Vegas Film Festival Adds Short-Form Competition and Awards to 2027 Festival
LAS VEGAS, NV: The Las Vegas Film Festival announced today that its 2027 program will expand its short-form competition to recognize a new generation of filmmakers and creators working across traditional cinema, digital platforms, and emerging media.
The Festival will present dedicated competition categories and awards for short films, video podcasts, vertical films, social media content, music videos, and episodic projects, bringing new forms of screen storytelling into the broader Las Vegas Film Festival program.
“Short-form filmmaking has always played an important role in cinema,” said Executive Director Louie Comella. “Stanley Kubrick made Day of the Fight before directing his first feature, while Martin Scorsese’s early career included a series of short films before his emergence as one of American cinema’s most influential directors. For generations, short films have provided filmmakers with a place to experiment, develop their craft, and introduce new ideas.”
What is changing is where those stories are being created, watched, and discovered.
“The lines between a theater screen and a phone screen have completely blurred,” said Festival Director Tom Ingram. “Today’s creators might be building worlds for a cinema, a streaming app, or a vertical feed. The technology and distribution may change, but great storytelling is still great storytelling. We think a contemporary film festival should be paying attention to all of it.”
The January Festival will introduce the expanded competition as part of its eight-day celebration of independent cinema. Traditional feature films, documentaries, and shorts will remain at the heart of the Las Vegas Film Festival, while the new categories will provide an additional path into the Festival for filmmakers creating outside conventional theatrical formats.
That commitment will expand further in September 2027 with the Shortcut Cinema Awards, a dedicated Las Vegas Film Festival event celebrating short-form screen entertainment. The September program will place an even greater focus on traditional narrative and documentary shorts alongside vertical filmmaking, episodic content, music videos, social-first projects, video podcasts, and emerging formats.
The approach reflects the Las Vegas Film Festival’s belief that the next generation of filmmakers may emerge from many of the same places filmmakers always have by picking up a camera and making something while having more ways than ever to reach an audience.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Las Vegas Film Festival Adds Short-Form Competition and Awards to 2027 Festival
Issued by Las Vegas Film Festival Publicity • Published on June 26, 2026
