Cinematexas International Short Film Festival

About Us

Cinematexas was brought to life in 1995 by filmmakers Athina Rachel Tsangari and Bryan Poyser, then students, who — at a university where Citizen Kane was considered the extent of groundbreaking cinema, and in a town crowded with strip malls, gated communities and multiplexes—took it upon themselves to introduce expanding cinema to the Texas frontier.

Cinematexas has evolved into the most discriminating short-film festival in the US, with an established international reputation as a festival of reference and a faithful audience of several thousand short-film lovers. Adhering to our tradition, we select films that are brave in their brevity; films that expand the ever evolving, crucial landscape of cinema through their defiance of tired tropes, stale genres and vacuous representation, whether celluloid or digital. Our festival seeks to provoke, expose and explore the short format as the last true laboratory of cinema.