Tel-Aviv International Student Film Festival (TISFF) was established in 1986 by students from the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University and has gained a strong reputation and prestige over the years. It has maintained its unique quality as a young and dynamic cinematic cultural event.
The festival is produced by 250 volunteers with a passion for filmmaking. Each year the students exchange the different jobs and gain experience and knowledge with the filmmaking world, while maintaining a high level of professionalism.
The festival is taking place each year during the month of June, at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and throughout the city of Tel Aviv. It features a wide range of student films from Israel and around the world, together with independent Israeli shorts, masterclasses and workshops with international guests, exhibitions, parties and pitching events for production grants.
We see our festival as a place that brings people together and creates a mosaic of nationalities, personal perspectives and artistic visions. Our goal is to make sure that the festival offers a diversity of this kind in the films it screens, in the guests it invites and in its special programs.
It is recognized by CILECT (The International Association of Film and Television Schools) as the largest and most important festival of its kind in the world. It has become the primary meeting place for film students from around the globe and serves as a platform to expose new ideas, exchange contemporary, cinematic discourse and is an irreplaceable forum for young Israeli and international filmmakers who fill the cinematheque theaters with a fresh, young spirit.
The Festival is one of one of the most significant cinematic cultural events in Israel.
The festival directors are being exchanged every 2 years by fresh graduates from the Steve Tisch School of Film and Television at Tel Aviv University. The students alone are the ones who produce the festival, curate the artistic program and develop the festival’s connections.