9 May – SeaShorts is a brand new film festival that features short films from 10 Southeast Asian countries: Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Brunei, Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia. The festival will open this 11 May with the omnibus "Fragment", a film made up of ten stories that celebrate the strength and diversity of Southeast Asian independent cinema. Short films chosen from competitions, omnibus films and even documentaries all about the region will be showcased at the festival, which will be by invitation only. There will be three competitions in total that will be held throughout the festival. The first is the SeaShorts Competition that highlights 20 Southeast Asian short films, selected from 265 submissions by the festival's selection committee. Amir Muhammad (Malaysia), Chalida Uabumrungjit (Thailand) and Wahyuni Hadi (Singapore) will judge the entries and award the winner with the SeaShorts Award. Focusing on Malaysia is the Next New Wave Competition. Out of the 10 Malaysian short films selected from 95 submissions, one will be awarded the Next New Wave Award after the entries are judged by Shanjhey Kumar Perumal (Malaysia), Sharifah Armani (Malaysia) and Aditya Assarat (Thailand). Thirdly, the From Wave to Wave: Student Films Competition will showcase 8 student films chosen by film students from different schools. The various other programmes that make up the SeaShorts Film Festival are the Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia - Southeast Asian Programme, Omnibus: Letters From The South, From Sea to Sea: Southeast Asia Programme, S-Express 2016, Special Programme: 3 Girls, The BMW Shorties Showcase and R.AGE : Documentary Journalism for the Digital Age. Trailers for the festival's films have already been released for viewing on YouTube. The short films will either be narrated entirely in English or in the respective creators' mother tongue, but with English subtitles, thus featuring one of the greater symbols of Southeast Asian society – the diverse languages. SeaShorts Film Festival takes place from 11 until14 May 2017 at various venues across Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.