In the contemporary media landscape, the short film has emerged from the shadow of feature cinema to become a potent vehicle for narrative experimentation, social critique, and cultural exchange. This paper examines the aesthetic strategies, thematic preoccupations, and production-distribution ecosystems of Indian short films in relation to their global counterparts (European, Latin American, and Asian). While world short cinema has historically been linked to avant-garde movements and film school pipelines, Indian short films—particularly from the last decade—navigate a unique tension between Bollywood melodrama, digital democratization (via platforms like Pocket Films and OTTs), and grassroots realism. Through comparative analysis, this paper argues that Indian short films are increasingly "indigenizing" global short film conventions (e.g., non-linear narrative, minimal dialogue, vérité style) while offering distinct interventions in caste, gender, and urban precarity.
| Feature | World Short Films (EU/US) | Indian Short Films | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | | National film funds (CNC, DFFF), festivals | Self-finance, corporate brand integrations, OTT commissions | | Festival path | Cannes (Court Métrage), Berlinale, Clermont-Ferrand | Mumbai Film Festival, Jagran, international diaspora festivals (IFFM) | | Typical length | 5–25 min | 15–40 min (longer due to narrative buildup) | | Audience reach | Festival circuits, MUBI, Arte | YouTube (50M+ views for hits like Khayali Pulao ), OTT anthologies |
The Short Film Transnational: A Comparative Study of Indian and World Short Cinemas indianxworld short films
World short films have long used brevity to capture moments of systemic rupture. For instance, the French short Wanted (2018) depicts migrant detention with claustrophobic urgency. Similarly, Indian shorts like Rogan Josh (2020, dir. Shubham Yogi) deploy a single kitchen setting to explore Kashmiri-Pandit grief and Hindu-Muslim tension. Unlike the often ethnographic distance of world cinema, Indian shorts tend to embed the viewer within familial and communal spaces—the courtyard, the train, the chawl—making the political intensely personal.
Yet convergence is growing. Netflix’s Ray (2021) — four shorts based on Ray’s stories — adopted a global anthology model. Indian directors are now applying short-film brevity to OTT series, while world festivals increasingly program Indian shorts not as "curiosities" but as formal innovators. In the contemporary media landscape, the short film
The short film, typically under 40 minutes, has often been relegated to the role of a "calling card" for directors. However, in both India and the world, it has evolved into an autonomous art form. Internationally, festivals like Clermont-Ferrand and platforms like Vimeo Staff Picks have canonized directors such as Alice Rohrwacher ( The Pupils ) and Pedro Almodóvar ( The Human Voice ). In India, the death of mainstream short-film distribution in theaters was reversed by YouTube channels (e.g., Terribly Tiny Tales , The Viral Fever ) and later by OTT giants (Netflix’s Putham Pudhu Kaalai , Disney+ Hotstar’s short compilations).
World short films (e.g., Six Shooter by Martin McDonagh) often hinge on a single, escalating irony. Indian shorts, influenced by the one-act play and the katha tradition, tend to build toward a moment of reversal rather than a plot twist. For example, Bypass (2019, dir. Priyanka Banerjee) follows a traffic boy (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) for 20 minutes; the revelation is not a surprise but a slow-burn emotional collapse. This reflects a cultural preference for rasa (emotional essence) over shock value. Through comparative analysis, this paper argues that Indian
The disparity is stark: world shorts are often subsidized as cultural artifacts, while Indian shorts survive through brand integrations (e.g., What’s Your Status? for a phone company) or as low-budget passion projects. However, India’s mobile-first consumption (over 600 million smartphone users) has created a parallel festival—the algorithm. Viral Indian shorts like The Bypass (not to be confused with the above) are viewed more widely than many award-winning European shorts.