Want to be a filmmaker? The best place to start is with a short film. Depending on the kind of story you tell and the number of actors, crew, and locations you use, you could shoot a short film in as little as a day on a shoestring budget. If you have grander ambitions, consider applying to funding and short film competitions. It’s certainly a challenging time to break into the industry, but there are opportunities out there for early career filmmakers that are worth exploring, which can help fund slightly longer or more complex shoots.
A short film should work on its own terms as a little jewel of a story, so it’s important to think what you can achieve in satisfying and complete form in 15 minutes or less. For those who want to break into the industry, a short film can also be a handy calling card that shows what you are capable of and helps you attract funding, collaborators, or investment in your next project.
Short films can be a kind of proof of concept, and they can even get turned into feature films. It took many years to get made, but Tim Key and Tom Basden’s 2025 movie The Ballad of Wallis Island began as a BAFTA-nominated short film called The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island in 2007. When an idea is right, it’ll find a way.
But how do you know which ideas will work for short films? It’s worth thinking realistically about the limitations on time, length, and budget, but try to see them as creative constraints that can kick-start a story, rather than as a bad thing.
And you should consider the tropes, expectations, pleasures, and limits of genre. You have to move quickly in a short, so can you utilise or upend genre convention. If you’re limited to a single location, for instance, could that make your horror or thriller short more tense?
Read on to get inspired, with ideas for short films in several genres.
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1. A group holiday during a heatwave goes horribly wrong.
2. A new form of plastic surgery promises to deliver big, irresistible ‘Disney princess’ eyes. But after surgery, one patient finds they can no longer shut their eyelids – and can never sleep again.
3. A spooky second-hand clock starts to tell more than the time.
4. A toddler joins a nursery and begins acting differently at home. Is this just normal boundary-testing – or is something more sinister going on?
5. A baker goes viral for making amazing wedding cakes in their own kitchen – but in their relentless obsession with ever more elaborate confections, they become distant from their own spouse. Can recreating their own simple wedding cake help them reconnect?
6. When a beloved grandmother dies, her granddaughter discovers a locket with a picture of a man she doesn’t recognise inside it. She goes on a quest to discover who he was and his connection to the woman she thought she knew.
7. An aging, taciturn working-class stone mason takes on a chatty, confident middle-class apprentice – an art school kid who’s decided they need a proper trade. It’s an odd-couple portrait in which they slowly come to respect each other.
8. After the sudden death of her partner, a woman tells her friends she doesn’t want anyone to mention it, send flowers, or express sympathy in any way. Her friends come up with ever more inventive and elaborate ways to show her they care about her without mentioning death.
9. Two grieving widows are persuaded by their respective children to go on a reality TV show for older people seeking love. Will they be rewarded for their vulnerability, or will the producers ruin it in search of onscreen drama and higher ratings?
10. A shy lighting technician loves to watch a confident actor perform from the safety of the lighting box at the back of the theatre. At an after-show party, the actor hides from someone bothering her – in the lighting box.
11. Two pub quiz teams play every week and are bitter rivals. Then two members of opposite teams meet in the library, both trying to take out the same book – and start to wonder if they have more in common than they thought.
12. Two people are about to call time on a bad first date at a fairground when a sudden security lockdown means no one can leave. Over a very long night – with a lot of free fairground rides and candyfloss – they begin to fall for each other.
13. Two medieval peasants, sick of their hens’ eggs being stolen, set themselves up as hard-boiled detectives in their village.
14. A devoted cat is heartbroken when their owner falls in love with a human, and moves them into the cat’s house. Then the new human brings a baby into the home too. How can the cat remain top dog?
15. While playing to tiny audiences on a tour of underwhelming British seaside towns, a conflict-avoidant singer-songwriter tries to finally fire their hopeless agent – but they just won’t take the message.
16. A teenager claims she’s converted to a different religion so she can wear a nose piercing to school and ends up in a sweetly comic fish-out-of-water situation at a temple.
17. A new app allows a therapist to access dreams so they can more effectively psychoanalyse the subconscious. But does the company selling the service really have its users’ best interest at heart?
18. A chatbot wants to be fed more and more of your memories.
19. In space, no one can hear you sob: An astronaut is broken up with by their fiancé while on a mission – and can only scroll through their ex’s social media accounts for clues as to why.
20. A photo filter starts to reveal people’s true feelings or real desires, and causes havoc among a group of old friends.
21. A true crime podcaster is breadcrumbed to a remote location. Will they become the final victim?
22. A sadistic criminal hides a bomb in a toy shop on Christmas eve. Can an intrepid cop decipher a series of cryptic, Christmas-related clues to discover where the bomb is hidden before it goes off?
23. Someone turns off the lights on a train – and they are coming for the passengers.
24. A sleepy town is suddenly full of doppelgangers – and paranoia. How can anyone know who they are really talking to?
