Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck

Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck is a filmmaker, videoartist and film curator. She creates videoprojections for theater, opera, dance and music concerts as well as video installations for exhibitions and museums. She teaches at art schools and has been working for film festivals as programmer, (Berlinale Shorts, Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, Europäische Kurzfilmbiennale, Zebra Poetry Film Festival, Filmwinter Stuttgart, Pictoplasma), moderator, member of the jury and/or panel conversation for almost 30 years. She co-runs shorts/salon and since 2019 she is head of Berlinale Shorts, the official competition for short films at the Berlinale.

Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck participated in “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025, a first-ever poll of its kind as a collective love letter to the art of short-form moving image. yanco and Kurzfilm Festival Hamburg, in collaboration with Talking Shorts, invited filmmakers, curators, distributors, critics, and scholars worldwide to nominate 10 audiovisual works under sixty minutes that they personally consider the “greatest” of all time. This was Anna Henckel-Donnersmarck’s submission:

Movie	Original Title	Director	Country	Year
Overtime	Oury Atlan, Thibaut Berland, Damien Ferrié	France	2004	5’
I have the feeling that many of those who contributed to this canon of short films are driven by a similar energy, love and appreciation for the art of short films as these Kermit look-a-likes show for their beloved creator.
Jill, Uncredited	Anthony Ing	Canada, United Kingdom	2022	18’
Since the short film canon not only presents the top 10 films that turned out to be the smallest common denominator most people could agree on, but also the other 94 films that a minimum of 4 people have voted for, it brings attention to the beauties that are waiting to be discovered at the margins of the mainstream. Just like Jill, Uncredited, which pays homage to those who are easy to overlook.
Circle	Joung Yumi	South Korea	2024	7’
The short film canon captures a moment in time. We might all have chosen different films five years ago and will most likely change our lists in the next five years. But for now, these 104 films are brought together in one place to peacefully share time and space, just like the people within the chalk circle the little girl drew on the floor in Circle.
Ten Minutes Older Par desmit minūtēm vecāks	Herz Frank	Latvia	1978	10’
What I like most about this reflection on empathy is the title. It beautifully summarizes the potential of art to make us older, wiser, richer, and more mature. Even in just 10 minutes.
Ten Meter Tower Hopptornet	Axel Danielson , Maximilien Van Aertryck	Sweden	2016	17’
This film is a beautiful testimony of the pleasure cinema can bring - to go through a roller coaster of emotions together in a room full of strangers, hear individuals laughing at different moments in the film, holding the breath in unison and together share a sigh of relief and compassion.
RGB XYZ	David O'Reilly	Ireland	2008	13’
Every now and then a film comes along that is so unique and different to the others, that it adds a new vocabulary to the language of cinema – even when it’s retelling one of the oldest stories in the book, in this case the hero’s coming of age.
Starfuckers	Antonio Marziale	USA	2022	15’
Some short films are like pop songs - you can watch them on auto-repeat and never get bored. You know every line, every frame, every edit by heart, you can almost sing along, and yet it manages to touch you again and again. For me, this is one of those films.
How To Disappear	Total Refusal	Austria	2020	21’
Short films often turn out to be a seismograph of our times; they can feel what’s in the air way before the public discourse picks up on it. This film finds an artistic expression that couldn’t be more fitting: it uses the world and game engine of a computer war game to talk about the history of warfare and different possibilities of deserting a battlefield.
Wishing well	Sylvia Schedelbauer	Germany	2018	13’
A timeless classic that sucks you into the sublime world that lies between two frames.
n.n.
I would like to dedicate this space to all those films which are not available. Please, dear filmmakers, share your films with the world, put them online wherever you want, and make them accessible, with or without paywall, distributor, agency, archive or personal webpage. Don’t let them sleep in some hidden corners or on dusty hard drives. Give us a chance to discover them, to recommend them, programm and show them, reflect on them and remember them.