Short Film News (SFN) - International Short Film Festival Oberhausen announced competition lineup for its 55th edition which comprises 134 films from 36 countries.

The festival has made some changes in its competitions. Debuting this year is the NRW Competition, featuring productions from the festival's home state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

In another new program called "Open Screening" Oberhausen offers filmmakers whose works did not make the final cut for one of the five competitions the opportunity to present their works to the festival audience.

In the International Competition, the organizers have loosened up the programming schedule, and 53 films from 32 countries will be shown.

Fiction and animation predominate in the International Competition, for example Cry Me a River, the new fiction short by Jia Zhang-Ke, whose feature-length film Still Life won the Golden Lion in Venice in 2006.

A series of established artists are also contending this year, among them Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Robert Frank, Victor Alimpiev, Josef Dabernig and Sun Xun.

German Competition will screen 25 shorts, while 10 productions in two programs will be shown in NRW Competition.

36 films from 17 countries among a total of 459 entries have been selected for Children's and Youth Film Competition, and 12 clips will compete for 11th MuVi Award.

Short Film Festival Oberhausen runs April 30 – May 5, and the list of all selected films is available here.