Nest, San Sebastian Festival's competitive section for short films by film students, invites submissions from Monday, June 2. The twenty-fourth edition of the meeting will run from 22 to 26 September and will have the goal of presenting the works of students from film schools all over the world. More than 60 students will gather in San Sebastian, where they can participate in the screenings of the short films and in Film Talks, the Festival section created to encourage discussion on the cinema from the focus of training, creation and the industry.

At last year's edition, thirteen shorts competed in Nest, having received 428 submissions from 200 schools in 48 countries. 

Each film school can submit up to three shorts made in the 12 months prior to the Festival dates, from which approximately fifteen are selected for participation in Nest.

All of these works will be appraised by a purpose-created jury of students from the selected film schools, with a professional from the film world as its president, who will choose the recipient of the Nest The Mediapro Studio Award coming with 10,000 euros for the director of the winning short film. This is the third year that the Studio has renewed its collaboration with Nest to support new international creative talent.

New this year, the competition will offer two additional accolades: the Movistar Plus+ Award for Best Short Film, entailing the purchase of the rights for its broadcast in Spain via the platform, and the Tabakalera Award, consisting of a 3-week residency to run in 2026 for the director of the chosen project. 

Shorts can be submitted online from Monday, June 2. The rules and regulations and other information related to Nest can be found on the official Festival website. The deadline for submitting projects is July 2.

To access the Terms & Conditions and submit a project, click here.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: JULY 2

Making of the Nest 2024 edition, produced by the Elías Querejeta Zine Eskola alumni Mònica Cambra Domínguez and Jan Baeta Salvany.

Nest is one of the San Sebastian Festival's foremost sections in its strategy to promote new talent. Since its creation in 2002, the initiative has welcomed more than 1,000 young filmmakers, with 90 masterclasses and talks featuring industry professionals including Céline Sciamma, Albertina Carri, Christian Petzold, Alexander Payne, Lila Avilés and Ruth Beckermann. Considered to be the place where it all begins, Nest has shown the work of filmmakers such as Diego Céspedes, recent winner of the Un Certain Regard Award at the Festival de Cannes with La misteriosa mirada del flamenco / The Mysterious Gaze of the Flamingo, as well as those of Raven Jackson, Leonardo van Dijl, Jerónimo Quevedo, Kiro Russo, Oren Gerner, Isabel Lamberti, Léa Mysius, Laura Wandel and Grigory Kolomytsev, all of whom have gone on to show their later works both at the San Sebastian Festival and at other competitions in the international circuit, such as Cannes, Sundance and Venice.