Edinburgh Short Film Festival: 16 nights of indie cinema

If you fancy a night at the cinema without committing to a two-hour epic, the Edinburgh Short Film Festival is back for its sixteenth edition, running from Friday 6 November to Saturday 21 November. It splits its programme across two venues, Filmhouse on Lothian Road and Summerhall off the Meadows, and the whole thing is 18+, so it is firmly aimed at an adult audience rather than the family crowd.

The line-up is the real draw here. There are 27 award-winning films and 29 UK premieres that have come through Cannes, Venice and the Berlinale, plus another 27 UK premieres from festivals around the world. It is a genuinely international programme, and the way it is laid out makes it easy to pick a night that suits you. It opens with 'Side By Side' at Filmhouse on the Friday at 20:35, and from there it moves through a series of themed nights: a Scottish Shorts Night on Saturday 7 November with nine Scottish productions, German shorts brought in by the International Kurzfilmwoche Regensburg on Wednesday 13 November at Summerhall, and Japanese shorts via the Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia on Thursday 14 November, with a separate Balkan programme alongside it. Friday 15 November gives you the European Film Festivals Showcase followed by a panel discussion, and the festival winds down with 'Too Many Tabs Open in My Head' on Saturday 20 November at Summerhall before the closing competition screening, 'Tough Day at Work?', and the awards on the 21st.

For anyone with a foot in the industry, it is worth knowing that the festival is BIFA qualifying, which gives the films screened here a genuine path towards the British Independent Film Awards. That qualification is part of why the programme carries so much weight, and it is a good reason to take a chance on a short you might otherwise walk past. The team behind it is led by festival director Paul Bruce, with assistant director Rebecca Selby-Heard and programmer Margherita Berti, and the festival's own blog is the place to go for trailers and programme updates as the weeks roll out.

On price, it is one of the more accessible things on in the city. Tickets range from £3.00 to £12.00 a head, and they have been on sale since mid-October, so there is no need to wait until the day to sort yours. Whether you are there for the Scottish night, the international showcases or just a cheap night out with something different on screen, it is a solid way to spend a November evening. The full programme, with all the films and screenings listed, sits on the festival website, so it is worth having a look before you commit to a particular night.