Heinz Hermanns, director of Interfilm Berlin, who visited HCM City recently to talk to Vietnamese students about making short films, wants to see more Vietnamese shorts at his festival.

Speaking at Hoa Sen University, Heinz said no Vietnamese short film has ever been screened at the Berlin International Short Film Festival.

He expressed happiness at the interest shown by Vietnamese youth in making short films. The meeting was crowded and students posed several questions to him.

He recalled that during his trip to Malaysia he could meet only 60 people asking few questions.

Young filmmakers in Cambodia too seemed to prefer making documentary films to short films, he said.

Even in a country with a "remarkable" movie industry like China, short films were not being made, he said.

Hermanns, who was visiting the country for the first time, believed there is a lot of talent in the country and it needs to be supported.

Hermanns, born in West Germany, founded the annual Berlin Interfilm Festival in 1982 and has run it ever since.

It has become one of the biggest short film festivals in the world, attracting 7,000 entries from over 122 countries last year, and the second leading film festival in Germany after the Berlin International Film Festival.

In 2011 he co-founded and headed the Going Underground super short film festival held in the Berlin underground./.