16 Days 16 Films announces the 16 finalist films and jury members

The annual short film festival and competition 16 Days 16 Films today announces the 16 finalist films and jury members for its 2025 edition.

With the support of UN Women, Equimundo, Spotlight Initiative, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, Times Up and UK Says No More, the festival showcases 16 remarkable short films from female-identifying filmmakers that explore, emote, or educate on the many forms of violence against women.

Running online from 25 November to 10 December 2025, between the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and International Human Rights Day, the festival aligns with the global 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence campaign.

During the 16-day campaign, one finalist film will premiere each day on the online platform 16 Days 16 Films, with all films remaining available to view until mid-December 2025.

The initiative is presented by Founding Directors Johanna von Fischer and Ginta Gelvan, who said:

“Every year we are struck by the courage it takes to make these films — and the even greater courage it takes to live the realities behind them. While these films confront difficult truths, they also carry profound hope — hope for accountability, for change, for collective imagination.
This year’s lineup holds beautifully crafted work and shows the power of women’s storytelling — raw, inventive and unapologetic. It’s impossible not to be inspired and changed after watching these films.”

This year’s call for entries attracted hundreds of submissions from around the world, and the 16 finalist films represent voices from the UK and US, Canada, Poland, Ukraine, North Macedonia, Italy, France, Turkey, India, Iran and Japan.

Each film, 26 minutes or under, is directed by a female-identifying filmmaker and offers a unique perspective on how gender-based violence, inequality, and discrimination manifest in different communities and cultures.

An independent jury of distinguished figures from the creative industries, activism, and social change sectors will select the winning filmmaker and two runners-up. Audiences are also invited to participate by voting online for the Audience Award.

All winners will be announced on 16 December 2025.

The 2025 jury includes:

Freya Seath, Strategic Advocacy Advisor – Preventing GBV
Georgi Banks-Davies, Filmmaker
Guilherme Nascimento Valadares – Founder of PapodeHomem and research director of the PDH Institute, Brazil
Imogen Carter, Founding Editor of the female-led media title – The Nerve
José Campi Portaluppi – Director of Communications and Advocacy – Equimundo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice, US
Nadia Latif, Filmmaker
Prano Bailey-Bond, Filmmaker
Susanne Wuest, Actor

This year’s 16 DAYS 16 FILMS finalists are:

WHERE WE STOP
Dir. Rachel Coburn (UK)
A young woman’s daily bus journeys shift from comfort to control as subtle signs of abuse emerge in her new relationship. (7 mins)

FUCK THEM ALL
Dir. Polina Biliaieva (Poland/Ukraine)
Kira, a 30-year-old Ukrainian, flees to Poland at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. Here a new challenge awaits her: Kira finds out that she is pregnant. Already traumatized, she doesn’t want to bring a new life into this world, but it is impossible for her to terminate the pregnancy in Poland. (15 mins)

TINY MOVEMENTS
Dir. Laura Sweeney (US/UK)
Short documentary about Jenn Green, a professionally trained modern dancer, mother of two, who discovered a file full of video recordings of her husband raping her, after he had drugged her with high doses of Ambien. (25 mins)

LEAVING YELLOWSTONE
Dir. Kayla Arend (US)
What starts as a romantic trip in the wilderness, turns ugly as Tessa fights for her life in the winter of Yellowstone National Park. (23 mins)

DON’T BE LATE, MYRA
Dir. Afia Nathaniel (Pakistan)
A missed school bus leaves ten-year-old Myra stranded in Lahore, where her journey home spirals into a tense fight for survival against the men who stalk her every step. (15 mins)

MISURE (Measurements)
Dir. Marta Capossela (Italy)
A couple’s drama unfolds in their claustrophobic small flat. He measures her every day, diligently noting every slightest change in her body. The trauma survives even after her rebellion. (20 mins)

SHE’S ASKING FOR IT
Dir. Natalia Zajączkowska (UK)
A woman’s harrowing experience reveals the unsettling normalisation of sexual violence, exposing how cinema – and society – disguise abuse as romance, while directly calling out the audience’s complicity in perpetuating rape culture. (10 mins)

BIRD WOMAN
Dir. Tokio Oohara (Japan)
Tokyo in a pandemic. Toki is fed up with the men who take advantage of the fact that their face is hidden to molest her. One morning, Toki puts on a bird mask and gets on the train and does something unexpected. This immediately becomes a topic of conversation on social media, and the image spreads like a virus. (21 mins)

MANGO
Dir. Joan Iyiola (France, UK)
Zadie is an independent florist, privately suffering from fibroids, but determined to take her career to the next level. When a dream job arrives, Zadie searches for help in order to control her morphing body but the unwanted growths threaten to take over. (11 mins)

CONTRACTIONS
Dir. Lynne Sachs (US)
We watch 14 women who witness and perform with their backs to the camera. In a place where a woman can no longer make decisions about her own body, they speak with the full force of their collective presence. (12 mins)

ULLARIVU (The Awakening)
Dir. Sumi Mathai (India)
A young girl’s deep connection with nature starts to disintegrate when she encounters the strangeness of the world. She loves exploring the world around her with curiosity and a sense of belonging that has not been questioned yet. But, soon she is forced to understand the rules of the game she’s destined to play. (14 mins)

HOPE IS LOST
Dir. Eno Enefiok (North Macedonia/UK)
After relocating to London with her twin babies, a desperate mother accepts help from a mysterious benefactor, leading her into an increasingly perilous situation. (16 mins)

THE TRUCK
Dir. Elizabeth Rao (US)
A Chinese American teen and her boyfriend try to buy the morning-after pill in post-Roe America. (14 mins)

A MOVE
Dir. Elahe Esmaili (Iran)
Against the backdrop of the Women, Life, Freedom protest movement in Iran, filmmaker Elahe Esmaili is helping her parents to pack up the family home. As the boxes stack up, discussions flare between the generations, but can changing a society be as simple as moving house? (26 mins)

CHICKEN BROTH SOUP
Dir. Deniz Büyükkırlı (Turkey)
While examining the corpse of a man during an autopsy, the doctor encounters an unusual symptom. Following this, the man’s wife confesses to poisoning her husband, who had been periodically abusing her. The doctor, who must now make a decision about the woman, faces a surprise at the end of the day. (18 mins)

MOTHER’S SKIN
Dir. Leah Johnston (Canada)
A neglected six-year-old girl struggles to cope with her mother’s depression and her father’s alcoholic rage, accidentally uncovering a secret from her mother’s past. (20 mins)