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Manhattan Short Film Festival

Court House showing

Registration required

All events are tentatively scheduled and may change. Please see the CMCL Events Calendar on our website, follow us on social media, and subscribe to our weekly eNewsletter for any and all updates.

Join us September 25th to October 4th, 2025, when over 100,000 film lovers in over 500 cities across six continents gather for one reason...to view and vote on the Finalists' Films in the 28th Annual MANHATTAN SHORT Film Festival. Please register at ONE location only.

The festival will be screened at Cape May County Libraries on the following dates:

• Thursday 9/25: Court House, 5:30pm-8pm
• Friday 9/26: Stone Harbor, 12pm-2:30pm
• Saturday 9/27: Sea Isle City, 12pm-2:30pm
• Monday 9/29: Upper Township, 5pm-7:30pm
• Tuesday 9/30: Cape May City, 5pm-7:30pm
• Wednesday 10/1: Lower Township, 5pm-7:30pm
• Friday 10/3: Wildwood Crest, 12pm-2:30pm
• Saturday 10/4: Woodbine Community Center, 12pm-2:30pm

WHAT IS MANHATTAN SHORT?
MANHATTAN SHORT is not a touring Festival; rather, it is an instantaneous celebration that occurs simultaneously across the globe, bringing great films to great venues and allowing the audiences to select their favorites. If the Film Festival experience truly is about getting great works in front of as many eyes as possible, MANHATTAN SHORT offers the ultimate platform -- one that sees its films screened in Sydney, Mumbai, Moscow, Vienna, Cape Town to cinemas in all fifty states of the United States and beyond.

Finalists will become eligible to enter the Oscars 2026
Every Film Selected for MANHATTAN SHORT 2025 will be Automatically Qualified for the Oscars of 2026. MANHATTAN SHORT does a full week's run at a cinema in Hollywood which is advertised in the LA Weekly. This advertised run automatically qualifies each film for the Oscars.

MANHATTAN SHORT FILMS HAVE BEEN TO THE OSCARS BEFORE! Many past Finalists from MANHATTAN SHORT have been nominated for an Oscar (SHOK and Bear Story from 2015, to name just two). Our audiences and cinemas love nothing more than seeing a film they voted for at MANHATTAN SHORT at the Oscars. Once a nominee is announced, our partnering cinemas and loyal audiences champion those films and filmmakers through social media all the way to the podium! In the last three years at least one film from the MANHATTAN SHORT's Oscar Qualifying Screenings has gone on to be nominated for an Oscar.

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