The competition short films are not mere exercises in filmmaking, but works of art in their own right. Ula Stöckl offers an overview of the work on display this year.

Idölle

They both study visual communication in Hamburg, have experience with animation and are comic aficionados: Anja Perl (27) and Petra Schröder (24) reveal a seemingly idyllic triangle between a cat, a parakeet and a flower to be a living hell (7 mins).

Strand

32-year-old Susanne Reck is currently working on her graduation film at the Film and Television School in Potsdam. In her fourth short, she tells a powerful tale of transience with a minimalist ensemble: a man, a woman and a beach (2 mins).

Desserts

With subversive humour, Scottish commercials director Jeff Stark handles a potentially gruesome subject. Ewan McGregor plays a man who puts an eclair he found on the beach into his mouth. Suddenly, a fishing hook penetrates his cheek (3 mins).

The Offering

Paul Lee hails from Hong Kong, lives in Toronto and works for a number of film festivals. His fourth short evokes Proust, as the taste of pastry leads a Buddhist monk back to the time of his great love (10 mins).

Masks

Does everyone have the face he or she deserves? 25-year-old Piotro Karwas has a faceless figure searching for the fitting physiognomy in this animated film (5 mins).

El topo y el hada (The Mole and the Fairy)

Spanish director Grojo presents a delightful parable, surreal and visually imaginative, about human mating rituals. Here, men can fly and women push wheelbarrows loaded with goldfish bowls. A masterful and subtly enigmatic example of short cinema (8 mins).

Pausa

In the second short film by the Italian acting and directing duo Michele de Vigilio and Nicola Scorza, nothing is what it seems. It starts with two crosscut close-ups of male faces. Their gazes are fixed upon each other. The camera imperceptibly zooms out. The men are balancing themselves on a plank over a precipice. This film toys tantalisingly with audience expectations (4 mins).

En Kväll Pa Stan (One Night Downtown)

This film by Swede Per Carlson takes place on a special night with three boys and their father as the protagonists. When night falls, the knives gleam and anything goes. Carlson not only wrote the script and directed, but also produced and composed the score (3 mins).

Koly (The Stakes)

Leningrad-born Boris Kazakov became a member of artists' and film-makers' collective Engineers of the Arts in 1990, and in 1994 joined the Ozjorki group. His processing of fictional and documentary film material satirises the Soviet pathos of "scientific and technical progress" (8 mins).

Faraon (Pharaoh)

In 1996 Sergej Ovcharov was voted "director of the year" by the Berlin Academy of Arts for his film Barabaniada. He combines animated and live-action sequences in his short film with a deft touch. He takes an ironic look at basic human situations through the use of images inspired by ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and frescoes (10 mins).