As you may have seen, voting is open for Your Film Festival, the global competition that unites the Venice Film Festival, Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions, Emirates and YouTube’s community of film fans, in a quest to discover the next great storyteller.

The Scott Free team selected 50 semi-finalists from more than 15,000 short films submitted by creators worldwide. Now, it’s up to you, the fans, to vote for your favorites, and ultimately send 10 finalists to the Venice Film Festival.

Here in the Google Sydney office, we are excited that Australians and Australian residents are behind many of the entries. Take a look at a few below:


Scruples, Director: Adrian Powers - A young double agent struggles to keep his cover when he witnesses a horrifying crime. Are a few innocent lives worth sacrificing for the greater good?




Bat Eyes, Director: Damien Power - Sixteen year old Adam teases a classmate. When he tries to apologise, she has quite different plans for him.




Boot, Director: Damien Power - A night out with best friends ends in tragedy and a terrible secret. Can you save a friendship with a lie?




Good Pretender, Director: Maziar Lahooti - After trying to convince some local bullies that her father is a robot, 11-year-old Ally is dared to shoot him with a spear gun to prove it.




Kiss, Director: Alex Murawski - Tom has never been kissed. His best friend offers his girlfriend to practice with, awakening Tom’s desire and changing the trio’s friendship forever.




The Telegram Man, Director: James Frances Khehtie - During the long years of World War II, Australia's small farming communities paid a terrible price. In the rural towns of New South Wales, one family each week discovered that their son or husband or brother or father would not be coming home. In the throes of such grief, one seldom considers the man who delivers the news.




At the Venice Film Festival, the 10 finalist filmmakers will have their work screened as part of the opening days of the festival and judged by a grand prize jury of industry professionals, including Ridley Scott and actor Michael Fassbender. The finalists will then pitch their next film project to the Ridley Scott team, all for the chance to win a $500,000 production grant to work with Ridley Scott’s award-winning team to create a new original work for YouTube.

So what are you waiting for? Watch the entries, vote for your favourite films on the Your Film Festival channel, and be part of the largest online film festival ever. Voting ends 13th July, so cast your votes now!

Posted by Ernesto Soriano, YouTube Marketing Manager, recently watched The Telegram Man.
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Earlier this month, Sydney Opera House celebrated Vivid LIVE, with amazing gigs from world-renowned musicians, and a very special pre-show hangout with the Temper Trap. And in a festival-first, four concerts were live streamed on YouTube with FRONTROW, a custom photo sharing app, which let audiences around the world capture priceless moments, like this streaker at The Temper Trap concert, and share them with friends.

There were over 900k views across the four concerts, with over half a million watching the final eye blasting concert from Amon Tobin, making his show the second largest streaming event in Australia since YouTube Symphony Orchestra. Here’s what he had to say about his latest creation, ISAM:



Back by popular demand, you can now replay and relive some of the best moments of Vivid LIVE on the Sydney Opera House Channel, with two special performances available in their entirety: The Lighting of the Sails by German design collective URBANSCREEN, and The Temper Trap’s live performance from their brand new chart-topping album. As you watch, you can lean forward and relive FRONTROW by zooming and panning within the viewer, taking photos, editing and applying filters and sharing your Vivid Live moments on your social networks.

Posted by Ernesto Soriano, YouTube Australia, just watched URBANSCREEN: behind the scenes.
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From trick shots and game clips to commentary and live events, sport has always been one of the most popular categories on YouTube. And we recently kicked off a new lineup of action sports channels to bring even more great content to you.

To help you Get More Into Sport, we asked three legendary Aussie surfers to line up their favourite sport videos on YouTube, and are featuring them this week on our homepage. Here’s what they came up with:

See how Australian Surf Hall of Famer Taj Burrow stays stoked on the road:




Push the Limits with Josh “Kerrazy” Kerr, known worldwide for big air and crazy moves:




Claiming back to back victories at the Rip Curl Women’s Pro Bells Beach, Sally Fitzgibbons remembers the unforgettable:




It’s easy to create your own playlists too – just log in to your YouTube account, and hit ‘add to playlist’ from any video on YouTube. We hope you’ll enjoy the playlists from these surf legends as much as we have, and keep an eye out for more from athletes around Australia & the World.

Posted by Ernesto Soriano, YouTube Australia, just watched Wizard of Aus: BMX and Hard Knocks Premier
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