With the disappearance of ‘Off’ and ‘Escape to Short Film’ at the turn of the millennium, a certain gap appeared in the film festival scene in Hungary. 

In 2004 a few young people decided to create an international short film festival at any cost. We gave ourselves 5 years, and our goal was to make the festival internationally respected. In 2009, the fifth year arrived, and it turned out that the BuSho short film fan base was much wider than we had imagined, so the continuation was out of the question. 

The international response has always been greater, thanks to the long-established short film culture in countries with high audiovisual capacity, where the reaction has always been swift (“BuSho Vision is not a media campaign against the US president!” – shortfilm.de) to BuSho’s already attention-grabbing messages. “Do you want a short? Small film, big treat! A compulsory short exercise!” 

BuSho was originally conceived to fill a gap, to give the growing short film community in the capital a chance to showcase their work and to give young filmmakers the chance to prove themselves in an international field. Each year, we have invited the creators of the selected films and the leaders of film workshops and festivals to participate, with the aim of providing a meaningful gathering for the creative communities to get to know each other through their work. 

The main organiser, the Gombolyag Foundation, and its partners include several social organisations, and their successful project is therefore a collaboration between the non-profit sector and cultural institutions. 

Our aim from the outset is to encourage joint activities between young filmmakers in the country and other European organisations involved in the audiovisual programme. Year after year we have managed to double the number of entries and thus the number of participating countries, with 2011 being a record year with 1845 entries from 80 countries and anyone who has followed our work will have realised what a multicultural diversity it has brought! Nevertheless, we do not want to run a festival factory and compete to see who can take more entries, because we have to process them conscientiously. 

Every year, the work has been carried out with the participation of renowned national and international experts, and the opinions and comments of the participants prove that there is a real need for an international festival of this kind in Hungary!  We believe and we know that there is a need for this event and we are confirmed every time by the professionals, creators and interested people who participate in the event.