Since spring 2025, young people have been working hard to organise these events. In Belgium, a group of around ten young people, supervised by POUR LA SOLIDARITÉ-PLS, managed the organisation of the BE OFF event, from booking the venue to communicating about the event and catering. A great experience for them!
BE OFF, held on 24 May, aimed to pre-select two short films to be sent to the Moonstep International Short Film Festival, where they will join the pre-selection made by Hungarian and Italian audiences. The audience was able to choose their two favourites from among the ten short films presented to them. In addition to the pre-selection, the BE OFF audience also enjoyed a masterclass with three guests from the audiovisual sector:
- Guérin Van de Vorst (director of short films, feature films and documentaries)
- Dominic Castagnola (director and former film professor at the Sorbonne)
- Sarah Gouret (director, editor and sound engineer).
They shared their experiences and advice on filmmaking with the audience.
And the involvement of the young Belgian organisers does not end there. Together with young people from Hungary and Italy, they are continuing to work on organising the Moonstep International Short Film Festival, which will take place in Turin in September.
A first step towards cinema
The Moonstep International Short Film Festival aims to be a starting point for new stories, and what better metaphor for this ambition than the moon, representing the courage to explore the unknown and the journey towards the impossible. As for the baseline ‘A first step towards cinema’, it highlights the festival’s role as a springboard for young talent. A first step not only for the selected emerging filmmakers, but also for the young Europeans who brought this festival to life.
For this edition of the Festival, young people chose the theme of (Dis)connection by frames. All the short films selected following a call for entries launched in March 2025 revolve around this theme. These short films are those presented at national pre-selection events. The favourites selected in the three countries (Belgium, Italy, Hungary) will join the short films chosen independently by the Festival’s Artistic Direction based on in-depth evaluations. They will then be nominated in two categories:
- ‘First step’: main competition, open to filmmakers aged 18 to 30 who have submitted their first short fiction film and have never won an award at other film festivals.
- ‘Next step’: category open to all genres of short films and all filmmakers over the age of 18.
A youth advocacy campaign to engage policymakers
In addition to organising the Moonstep Festival, the BE UNIT project aims to work with young people to draft an appeal to political decision-makers. The goal is to formulate concrete suggestions for promoting social inclusion and the socio-professional development of young people.
To this end, two questionnaires were shared with the audience at the Belgian event BE OFF, which focused, among other things, on young people’s perceptions of cultural life and their needs in relation to it.
The advocacy will be presented at a final conference in Brussels in December 2025.
