History

Västerås Film Festival was founded in 2015 by Carlos Morén. The festival’s mission is to strengthen interest in quality film and production regionally, nationally and internationally. During the first round, we only received short films, both fiction and documentaries.

In 2016 we showed feature films for the first time. Best documentary, short film, directing, photography, female and male actors were divided up and are now also awarded to Swedish recipients.

In addition, three completely new prices were established; The New Star Award, which aims to find a new rising talent, as well as the Miniroom.se children and youth talent prize, to draw attention to a child actor who have particularly distinguished themselves that year.

The third prize that premiered was the Honorary Prize, which from this year onward has been awarded to fantastic Swedish actors. The first actor to be honoured was Lennart Jähkel.

For 2019 edition, we opened the doors for music videos, our own category in the field of film.

The festival is now being prepared for its sixth year. The festival will be moved from late autumn in October to early summer in June, which means that the next one takes place in 2021.  We are expanding with a new category; Commercial, Nordic and international. The previous national prices are changed to Nordic. Since it can be uneven for short and feature films to compete for the same prizes, we add prizes especially for short films.

A youth competition is also added, where we give young people in Västerås the chance to show off their creativity by recording minute-long films.