Savoir-Faire Shorts: Fort Lauderdale's Film Festival Has a Secret

The Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival has been running for nearly four decades. Most people in South Florida know it exists. Far fewer know about the Savoir-Faire Shorts program — five days of short film programming that is, in many ways, the most interesting part of the festival. Here is what you're missing.

The Savoir-Faire Shorts program opens at the Mai-Kai — the legendary Polynesian restaurant and tiki bar on Federal Highway that has been a Fort Lauderdale institution since 1956. The Mai-Kai is one of the last surviving examples of mid-century tiki culture in the United States, and it is the perfect venue for a film festival opening night: theatrical, atmospheric, and entirely unlike anywhere else in South Florida. The combination of short films and the Mai-Kai's signature cocktails and Polynesian show is the kind of evening that doesn't happen anywhere else.

One of the program's most forward-looking events is a dedicated session on AI filmmaking at Mad Arts in Fort Lauderdale. The session brings together filmmakers, technologists, and critics to examine what artificial intelligence is doing to the craft of short film — the tools that are democratizing production, the questions they raise about authorship and authenticity, and the films that are already being made with AI assistance. It is the kind of programming that positions the Fort Lauderdale festival as a place where the future of cinema is being discussed, not just the past.

Florida Day is the program's closing celebration — a dedicated showcase for Florida-made short films that gives the state's filmmaking community a platform it rarely gets at major festivals. The films selected for Florida Day reflect the diversity of the state's creative community: documentary, narrative, experimental, and animated work from filmmakers across South Florida, Central Florida, and the Panhandle. It is the day the festival earns its local credibility.

The Savoir-Faire Shorts program runs November 7–11 as part of the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival. Individual event tickets and festival passes are available through the FLIFF website.

Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival: fliff.com. Mai-Kai: 3599 N Federal Hwy, Fort Lauderdale. Mad Arts: 2031 Harrison St, Hollywood.