The Berlinale Shorts competition programme has invited four animated shorts from  Korea, Sweden, and Germany to make their world  (WP) or international premiere  (IP) at the 2013 festival. These will compete with 23 other live-action short films for the Golden Bear for the Best Short Film, the Silver Bear Jury Award,  the DAAD Short Film Award, and the Berlin Short Film Nominee for the European Film Awards.

 Echo by Merlin Flügel explores loneliness, identity, and complex relationships that repeatedly emerge.

The Korean Love Games (Joung Yu Mi) is a 10-minute short that tells of an unusual finding Eujin discovers when she decides to clean up her room (see full synopsis below).

Whale Women by Ewa Einhorn and Jeuno JE Kim is the Swedish entry. Hypozentrum by the Frankfurt artist Xenia Lesniewski promises to be a time-based fragmented union of fiction and reality in an animated ensemble: from ass to mouth.

 The list:

•  Whaled Women, Ewa Einhorn/Jeuno JE Kim, Sweden, 9' (WP)
• ECHO, Merlin Flügel, Germany, 5' (WP)
• Hypozentrum, Xenia Lesniewski, Germany, 15' (WP)
• Love Games, Yumi Joung, Republic of Korea, 15' (IP)

LOVE GAME

In bed, late on a sleepless night in the depth of winter, Eujin finds a small dust kid. She decides to do the cleaning she has been putting off for so long. Cleaning every corner of her room, she keeps finding other dust kids here and there, and starts clearing them up one by one. Just when she thinks she has cleaned her room and the dust kids are all gone now, she comes face to face with another one...

The 63rd Berlin Film Festival takes place from 7-17 February 2013.