The Canadian Film Centre's Worldwide Short Film Festival (WSFF), founded by Brenda Sherwood in 1994, was an annual film festival held over several days in Toronto, Ontario in June, at The Annex-Yorkville area venues; including the Bloor Cinema, the University of Toronto, and the Isabel Bader Theatre, among others.
The WSFF holds accreditation, and is recognized as a qualifying event for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) short film awards. This means that certain award-winners at the WSFF are eligible to be nominated for the Oscars, Genies, and BAFTAs awards.
In 2012, the festival received 4,768 submissions from 113 countries, and it is currently the largest short film festival in North America. The festival has been described in the Canadian Encyclopedia as "a popular and productive meeting place for audiences, filmmakers, buyers and sellers interested in the art and commerce of making movies in short form", and this is reflected in the Short Films Big Ideas Symposium, which features master classes and panel discussions focused on professional development for those involved in the industry.
Each year the festival offers a celebrity program which has, in the past, featured films with such notables as Scott Thompson, Judi Dench, David Duchovny, Michael Fassbender, Max von Sydow, Natalie Portman, Dick Van Dyke, Don Cheadle, Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Crispin Glover, Gérard Depardieu, Stephen Fry, and Anthony Hopkins, among others. The festival has also had films screen by many notable directors and celebrities, including Errol Morris, Spike Jonze, Rachel Weisz, Talmage Cooley, Courteney Cox, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. In addition to the annual screenings in June, the festival also runs a monthly screening series called A World of Shorts.