Esmé Holden

Esmé Holden 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 Esmé Holden’s submission:

Movie	Original Title	Director	Country	Year
Washerwomen on the River euses sur la rivière	Louis Lumière , Auguste Lumière	France	1897	1’

The Unchanging Sea	D.W. Griffith	USA	1910	14’

Snow-White	Dave Fleischer	USA	1933	7’

The Dover Boys at Pimento University, or The Rivals of Roquefort Hall	Chuck Jones	USA	1942	9’

Anticipation of the Night	Stan Brakhage	USA	1958	42’

Wavelength	Michael Snow	Canada, USA	1967	45’

Elephant	Alan Clarke	United Kingdom	1989	37’

The Seats of the Alcazar Les Sièges de l'Alcazar	Luc Moullet	France	1989	54’

Dottie Gets Spanked	Todd Haynes	USA	1993	30’

In the Darkness of Time Dans le noir du temps	Jean-Luc Godard	France	2002	10’