STFFShorts 2026 selections are announced!
Narrative and Documentary Selections will be screened on November 7-8, both at SIFF Cinema Uptown. Stay tuned for tickets!
STFFShorts Program
STFFShorts Program is a part of the STFF Festival and a celebration of short films of all genres. The jury primarily consists of distinguished voices in the Seattle arts community.
Each year, during STFF, STFFShorts brings together a curated selection of shorts - both narrative and documentary, providing international exposure to exceptional filmmakers and connecting them with Northwest audiences.
STFFShorts 2026 Selection
Alis
Beril Tan | TURKEY, ARMENIA, GERMANY, US | 2025 | 17 min
Alis, an Armenian woman in Turkey, returns to her summerhouse to find her surroundings gone. Urban change threatens her home. Haunted by childhood traumas, she resists, planting her plastic umbrella as a quiet yet firm defiance.
Ankara 1979
Can Karayalcin | TURKEY | 2025 | 19 min
In the late 1970s, as political turmoil gripped Ankara, Turkey, Faruk returns home wounded after posting illegal flyers. As political unrest seeps into daily life, he struggles between his ideals and his family duties. His mother Mutal’s quiet resolve shields her sons, while within the home, small acts of defiance reveal the fragile existence of a family living under the looming shadow of the approaching military coup.
Close
Buse Halacoglu | TURKEY | 2026 | 15 min
Two women from different social classes cross paths in front of a supermarket about to close, find themselves having to shop together under the shadow of the economic crisis. Burdened with mutual prejudices and anxieties, the tense short time they share breaks through invisible walls, revealing an unexpected closeness; an ordinary encounter becomes a quiet yet profound confrontation for them.
Feridun
Utku Ali Güler | TURKEY | 2025 | 13 min
Feridun, a reclusive man crippled by a fear of the outside world, lives a quiet, isolated life - until one day, he discovers a mysterious note inside his washing machine.
Gravity
Dalya Keles | TURKEY | 2026 | 16 min
Deniz (12) plays freely with her best friend at their secret hideout. At school, while playing with boys, she’s pushed aside for who she is and fails to fit in with the girl group. In this quiet moment of growing up, her dream world takes on a different meaning.
Love and the Others
Berna Sitera Degirmen | TURKEY | 2026 | 19 min
Zeynep and Can are new lovers. One night, while cycling, they are stopped by the police. During the ID check, it turns out Zeynep has a record due to her participation in political protests. The officers disapprove of their relationship, leaving Can torn between love and the pressures of identity. What starts as a joyful night turns into an unsettling confrontation under the authoritarian gaze shaped by nationalist and patriarchal prejudices - revealing love’s fragile yet resilient nature.
Not Built to Last
Deniz Arikan | NETHERLANDS | 2026 | 20 min
Two architects meet for a single day in Rotterdam. Daniel, a local, is assigned to guide Emre, a visitor from Istanbul, through the city and its architecture. What begins as a professional tour gradually reveals their differences in freedom, identity and the idea of home, almost as if Rotterdam and Istanbul themselves are meeting for a day.
Retreat
Saim Güveloglu | TURKEY | 2025 | 15 min
Berna rents all the rooms of a boutique hotel, 'a meeting point for people longing for nature', in order to rest her head for a while. Her goal is to spend four days alone among the sounds of birds and the rustling of trees. Things do not go as she expects because Berna overlooked something while making all these plans: Wherever she goes, she will never be alone.
Till Death Do Us Part
Deniz Kolos | TURKEY | 2025 | 19 min
After finding out that her soon-to-be-ex-husband will be stopping by to pick up his belongings, ER nurse Songul decides to go home late, to avoid confronting him. To pass the time, she starts helping an elderly man search for his missing granddaughter.
The Hotel
Halil Tanısan | TURKEY | 2025 | 11 min
A man finds himself alone in an eerie hotel, at the center of a dark plan. Everything in the hotel seems to operate according to a rule he does not know.
The Impasto
Alperen Içmez | TURKEY | 2026 | 2 min
The story follows a couple and their dog on an caravan journey, completely surrendering to the melancholic flow of the moment with no idea what tomorrow will bring. Through silent resignation and a raw, minimalist atmosphere, this short film explores the fragile randomness of life
The Night Shift
Salih Ortaçay | TURKEY | 2025 | 19 min
Emrah, who works as a receptionist in the night shift of a boutique hotel, is constantly monitored by his boss Adem through security cameras and this surveillance becomes increasingly irritating.
STFFDocs 2026 Selection
Anemoia: A Letter From Future
Zeynep Ceren Özden | TURKEY | 2026 | 21 min
After discovering her passion for cinema in a small building called the Film Center at her university, a student decides to explore the memories of the place and the people who once shared the same passion. But the closer she gets to the past, the more she realizes that the challenges of making independent cinema, along with the hardships of everyday life, quietly surround both the Center and its students.
Color of the Stone
Tugba Yasar | TURKEY | 2025 | 8 min
Based on a family album, the film traces how the Kurdish villages burned in the 90s are transformed in the collective memory passed down from generation to generation, at the intersection of the personal and the social.
Everyone is Don Quixote Here
Ekrem Çanak | TURKEY | 2025 | 26 min
First comers blame the next comers for the deterioration of the neighborhood.
Everyone Here is Don Quixote is a fiction–documentary film that traces the marks and effects of the gentrification process in the historic Yeldegirmeni neighborhood of Kadıköy. The documentary focuses on the transformation the neighborhood has undergone through gentrification, its longtime residents, newcomers, artists, Erasmus students, and their lives.
I Am 12.000 Years Old
Batuhan Karadagoglu | TURKEY | 2026 | 32 min
“I Am 12,000 Years Old” is a quiet yet profound story that questions the significance of individual effort in sustaining collective memory. Set in a remote village in Turkey, it brings to light the humble resistance of a hero overlooked by the modern world.
Student Filmmaker Workshop
We are thrilled to announce the STFFShorts Student Filmmaker Workshop in collaboration with Western Washington University (WWU)! Film Screening and Panel discussion will be moderated by Professor Eren Odabasi at the Western Washington University in Bellingham, WA, with participation of Film Studies students and guest professors.
Thanks to our student filmmaker submitters and to this wonderful collaboration with WWU! Stay tuned for more updates and get ready to dive into some amazing conversations about filmmaking!
2026 Student Filmmaker Workshop Selection
Ankara 1979
Can Karayalçın | TURKEY | 2025 | 19 min
In the late 1970s, as political turmoil gripped Ankara, Turkey, Faruk returns home wounded after posting illegal flyers. As political unrest seeps into daily life, he struggles between his ideals and his family duties. His mother Mutal’s quiet resolve shields her sons, while within the home, small acts of defiance reveal the fragile existence of a family living under the looming shadow of the approaching military coup.
STFFShorts 2026
Film Screeners
Ali Aytaç Mehmetoglu
Berke Can
Burak Kutlu
Cansu Gurler
Cagri Kocyigit
Didem Demirkilinc Ibis
Duygu Aktas
Gokhan Duymaz
Irem Gokce Aydin
Nur Ozyurt
Nural Sumbultepe
Osman Ibis
Toghrul Jafarov
STFFShorts 2026 Grand Jury
Ghinwa Yassine
Executive Director at MENA Film Festival
Ghinwa Yassine is an anti-disciplinary artist, art educator, and cultural producer based on the land of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh people, so-called Vancouver. She was born and raised in Beirut, Lebanon, worked in Dubai and London, studied in the Netherlands, and moved to Vancouver in 2017. She is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of MENA Film Festival that inaugurated in 2019.
Ghinwa’s internationally exhibited artworks use various media, including film, installation, performance, text, and drawing. She was awarded the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Fellowship in the Humanities in 2023. Her first solo show took place at la Centrale Gallerie Powerhouse in 2024, and she was 3-times nominee to the Lind Prize at Polygon Gallery.
Rana San
Filmmaker, Curator, Choreographer
Rana San is an intermedia artist and curator. Her practice centers experimental and analog approaches to storytelling on stage and screen. Based between Seattle and Istanbul, she co-directs Cadence Video Poetry Festival and Anadolu Turkish Folk Dancers.
Sarah Mowaswes
Filmmaker
Sarah Mowaswes is a first-generation Palestinian-American director/producer based in New York whose work centers on illuminating human stories through lost archives. She was part of the Palestine Film Institute’s 2025 Producers Network cohort at the Cannes Film Festival. Recently, she produced the film Edward Said: Between Worlds which premiered at TIFF and NYFF and is continuing its robust festival run this fall. She is a member of the television arts and sciences academy and speaks English and Arabic.
meet the artist
Kyle Shaffer
Kyle Shaffer is a digital collage artist and designer in Seattle, WA. His interest in collage came through attending punk shows and viewing the DIY posters created to promote underground musical artists. Often, these posters were created in a lo-fi format and the gritty feel and combination of surprising visual elements is something that continues to inspire and fascinate him as an artist. His involvement playing in the Seattle music scene with his band No Edits has led him to design concert posters and album covers for Seattle area bands, while also pursuing his own artistic work.
Kyle's process focuses on intuition and happenstance, often letting images he's collected guide the way throughout his work. This focus on spontaneity and experimentation leads to the creation of pieces that combine surprising, sometimes quite disparate, elements into playful or surreal compositions that invite the viewer to explore. He enjoys working on both free-form abstract artwork for his own enjoyment, as well as more focused design-centered projects and hopes to do much more of both in the future.
This piece came together the way most of my collages do - by becoming fixated on a source image and then letting intuition guide the rest of the process. For this work I wanted to push myself to combine lots of disparate elements, combining vintage illustration and photographs, to produce something that felt complex yet cohesive. "Gather" felt like an appropriate title that acknowledges the different pieces within the composition that come together to form a unified whole.
Check out more of his artworks at:
past
screenings
STFFShorts Awards
We are delighted to offer various awards to celebrate short filmmakers for their films in either the fiction or documentary categories!
Contact Us
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