Film enthusiasts are in for a treat this weekend.
Thanks to the Okotoks Film Festival, people can watch all of the 2025 Oscar-nominated short films at the Okotoks Cinemas starting today (Feb. 20).
"We are showing all of the packages of short films that have been nominated," Festival Organizer Katie Fournell explains. "So, there's three categories of short films at the Oscars. There is live action, documentary, and animated."
The Film Festival has been working with Shorts HD and Magnolia Pictures, who put together these short film packages and send them out to film festivals around the world.
"The really cool thing about it is you can sit down at the animated short package and watch all of the films that are nominated in that category, which is impossible with Best Picture because there are ten feature films."
Fournell says they have created a schedule with the short films where you can go two out of the three days and still see all of the films.
"Also, the cool thing about the short films is those are the filmmakers that are going to have the next step of their career. They're the next ones, so it's really cool to watch."
There are 15 short films being shown this weekend, with five short films in each category.
This is the ninth time the Film Festival has held these screenings and was the first unique film event they were able to bring to town.
There will be a short film package shown at 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. at the Okotoks Cinemas on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
On Friday, they will screen the documentary shorts at 4 and 9 p.m., whereas on Saturday they will be showing the Animated shorts at 4 p.m. and the Live-action shorts at 9 p.m.
On Sunday, the Live-action shorts will be shown at 4 p.m. and the Animated shorts will be shown at 9 p.m.
While it costs $10 to go to each package, it only costs $15 to see all three packages.
As part of the screening of the short films, the attendees get to predict which short film will win an Oscar.
All of those who guess the correct short film will have their name entered into a draw, where people have a chance at winning 20 credits to the Okotoks Film Festival, which gives the winner 20 tickets to watch the films at the Film Festival.
While the short packages typically did well in the past, Fournell says that tickets to this one are selling fast, and they have already sold more tickets this year than in previous years.
To learn more and to purchase tickets, head over to their website.