Community Guidelines

A vote is a single verified person’s reaction to a film they watched. Only votes from accounts with a verified email count toward Best Of and award cycles, and you cannot vote on your own film.

• Do not create additional accounts to vote for a film.
• Do not organise vote drives, trade votes, or pay for votes.
• Do not down-vote a filmmaker's whole catalog out of rivalry.

We flag unusual patterns — a burst of votes in a short window, or a concentration of brand-new accounts — for human review. A flag is not an accusation; a programmer looks before anything is disqualified.

Submit only films you made or are authorised to present, and credit the people who made them. Claiming another filmmaker’s profile, or listing yourself in a role you did not hold, is grounds for removal from the program.

• Material that sexualises minors, in any form.
• Content that incites violence against people, or that exists to harass a person or group.
• Real footage of death, injury or cruelty presented for shock rather than for a film's purpose.
• Advertising, promotional reels or brand content presented as a short film.
• Films uploaded to a provider without the rights to do so.

Difficult subject matter is welcome. Short film has always gone to hard places, and a content note on the film page is how we handle it, not exclusion.

If something is wrong — a film will not play, credits are incorrect, or content breaches these guidelines — use the report form. Every report is read by a programmer, and a film in question is usually pulled from the queue while it is checked.

Depending on what happened we may discount votes, remove a film, close an account, or disqualify an entry from an award cycle. Serious or repeated breaches end participation. Every decision is recorded in an internal audit log with the programmer who made it.