The Go Short International Short Film Festival Nijmegen has quite quickly become one of Europe's most respected short film festivals. Now its in 11th year, the festival is among Oscar-, BAFTA- and EFA-nominating events, and one of the crucial factors that led to such prominence is the festival's dedication to industry and training in the field.

The backbone of Go Short's industry section is the Industry Day, which took place 5 April this year. It consisted of a slew of talks, presentations and panel discussions. The day kicked off with Possibilities for Short Film Makers, a presentation of two platforms that help filmmakers make the journey from developing a script to getting the right people to see the film: Euro Connection by Julie Rousson and T-Port by Niv Fux.

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This was followed by The Festival Circuit, a panel that shed light on selection and programming of short films at festivals. The panellists, Locarno's Charlotte Corchete, Oberhausen's Hilke Doering, Sundance's Lisa Ogdie and Philip Ilson of the London Short Film Festival, provided insight into the selection process and gave advice to filmmakers on how to identify the right festivals for their films.

At the amusing and insightful Filmmaker Fail Story talk, Switzerland's Jela Hasler showed how a perceived fail can be turned into an advantage. When the protagonist pulled out of her porn star documentary graduation film in the last moment, she made No Porn, a personal film about how her family reacted to her intention.

Another very engaging event was First Impressions: Feedback Panel, where Christoffer Olofsson of Uppsala Short Film Festival, Emilia Mazik of Short Waves Festival in Poznan, and editor Ruby Deelen of VPRO gave feedback about opening sequences of short films by filmmakers who were free to bring their works to be examined, sometimes in a brutally honest way. It was moderated by Jing Haase of the Swedish Film Institute.

Other events included Polina Medvedeva's Artist Talk, a presentation of Less Is More by Miguel López Beraza, Masterclass on Scriptwriting for Short Film by Selina Ukwuoma, a Dutch session on music video industry, as well as Professional Speeddates, where filmmakers had the chance to chat to representatives of funds (NPO Fonds, Netherlands Film Fund), festivals (interfilm Berlin, Winterthur, Leuven), sales agents (Radiator Film Sales), associations (Short Film Conference, NISI MASA) and Creative Europe.

In parallel, New Arrivals: Go Short Campus hosted and trained young filmmakers who are about to make the leap from the academy to the professional world. Twenty participants from Denmark, Greece, Poland, Italy, Serbia, Macedonia, Croatia, Lithuania, Spain, the UK, Switzerland, Kosovo and the Netherlands spent four intense days developing their projects and learning about festival and distribution strategies, pitching and co-producing. The Campus also included masterclasses by Nils Vleugels and two of the filmmakers who were part of the Festival Spotlight: Jacqueline Lentzou and Bálint Kenyeres.

On the last day, the participants pitched their projects in two separate sessions to two panels of experts, who provided them with valuable feedback both on their projects and pitching skills.

As far as the short film festival circuit goes, Go Short has again proven it is among the leading and most useful industry events in Europe.