Vertifilms, the festival that believed in vertical film before TikTok

In 2016, in Prague, when TikTok didn't yet exist and vertical was still seen as a framing error, Krystof Safer created Vertifilms, a festival entirely dedicated to films shot in 9:16. Interview with Krystof Safer, founder of the Vertifilms festival, conducted by Wenwen Han.

For him, a vertical film is first and foremost a work conceived for a smartphone held vertically, without abandoning the conventions of classic cinema. The films selected for Vertifilms are shot with a real crew, with editing and color grading work, and full credits. The only difference lies in the framing, not in the artistic ambition.

Very quickly, the festival began receiving works from all over the world: music videos, documentaries, and short films shot in Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Some directors playfully subverted the format's constraints, playing with the height of bodies, architecture, or multi-layered compositions. Vertifilms also invented screening venues adapted to the 9:16 aspect ratio, such as a narrow, very tall church in Prague transformed into a vertical theater, to demonstrate that the format could exist beyond the flow of social media.

For Krystof Safer, this experience proves that a vertical film can be presented like any other film: in a theater, in front of an audience, in a context of meetings and debates, with the same seriousness as a traditional film festival.

Connecting Europe to the wave of Asian micro-dramas

Over the years, his intuition has been confirmed by what's happening in Asia, where short dramas are exploding in popularity and transforming the phone into a veritable pocket television. Chinese, Korean, and Japanese platforms are structuring a microdrama market, with dedicated budgets, formats, and business models. What Vertifilms was experimenting with on the auteur side is becoming a full-fledged industry there.

In an interview with Wenwen Han, Krystof Safer observes that many Western creators enjoy shooting vertically for social media, but now want to tell longer stories with characters, narrative arcs, and seasons. Vertifilms served as a laboratory for these aspirations, offering visibility to projects that go beyond simple "disposable video."

The European challenge remains: a continent fragmented by languages, viewing habits, and national markets, where subtitles are sometimes unreadable on small screens. Krystof Safer, however, is optimistic. According to him, AI-assisted translation and dubbing tools will facilitate the distribution of Asian series to Western audiences, provided the stories are compelling.

Having championed vertical content long before TikTok, Krystof Safer now wants to position himself as a link between Western creators and the Asian micro-drama ecosystem, capitalizing on the experience accumulated with Vertifilms.

Interview conducted by Wenwen Han. Discover her YouTube channel.

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