The European Short Film Audience Award Goes to the French Film Tondex 2000

The European audience has voted for the winner of the European Short Film Audience Award for the year 2023–2024. The winner of the award is Tondex 2000 (France, 2023) by Jean-Baptiste Leonetti. After a year on tour, the award was announced at the Brussels Short Film Festival on 27 April.

The winner of the ESFAA award is chosen annually from among the national audience award winners of the film festivals organising the competition. The French Tondex 2000 achieved its national popularity at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. The fictional short film tells the story of an Afghan veteran living on petty crime who crosses paths with an upper-class CEO struggling with her company.

The Tampere Film Festival’s nominee for the 2023–2024 ESFAA award was Pavel Andonov’s Blue Note (Finland, 2022). In the 2024–2025 ESFAA tour, the national short film that collected the most audience votes at the Tampere Film Festival 2024, Heta Jäälinoja’s Nun or Never! (Finland, 2023), will be aiming for the award.

The 2024–2025 award will be presented once again at the Brussels Short Film Festival in the spring of 2025. Read more about the nominees on the ESFAA website.

Since 2019, ten European film festivals, including the Tampere Film Festival, have organised the European Short Film Audience Award competition. In 2023–2024, there were nine films on tour instead of ten, as the Lviv International Short Film Festival Wiz Art in Ukraine could not take place due to the war impacting the country.