Reelife Short Film Festival is an issues-based festival of youth filmmaking. Reelife encourages young Australians 15-25 to make films on issues they care about or which affect them. They can be in any genre and up to ten minutes in length. Unlike many short film festivals, which exist largely as technical exercises for filmmakers to showcase their filmmaking abilities, the focus of Reelife is firmly on the content, the stories, the hopes and fears of these young Australians. Reelife is about giving young people an opportunity to reveal something about their life, viewpoints and beliefs through the medium of film. The films screened in Reelife are authentic and raw, displaying both a prowess of filmmaking technique and a genuine youth voice with something to say. Over the past four years we have received an amazing and diverse selection of films, covering such topics as logging, multiculturalism and belonging, sexuality, homelessness, the loss of a parent or friends, rural isolation, environmentalism and militarism. These explorations range from the humorous and irreverent to the reverential and confronting. They each represent a unique voice. 

In 2007 an international program was added to the Reelife Short Film Festival for the first time, showcasing the ‘Best of Young British’ film-making, presented in partnership with The British Council. 

In 2008 Reelife will present ‘Hot Spots’, a curation of youth-made films from conflict zones around the world including East Timor, Iraq, Sri Lanka and the Balkans, presented in partnership with UNESCO.