Fifth anniversary Aesthetica Short Film Festival in York will be "even bigger than anticipated"

She is clasping a copy of the official programme for the 2015 Aesthetica Short Film Festival, hot of the presses with its cover invitation to Explore York, Experience Film.

Alongside this 156-page guide to the November 5 to 8 event, she is holding the equivalent programme for the 2013 event. A black, rather than white, cover is not the only difference. The 2013 edition ran to 88 pages, pretty much half the number, and yet both covers still proclaim 15 Venues. 300 Films. 4 Days.

"That's amazing, that increase in size in two years," says the dynamic director. "This year's festival is going to be bigger than ever and it's even bigger than I anticipated. I can't believe many industry people are coming; how many people are buying four-day festival passes; and they're coming from all over.

Aesthetica Short Film Festival director Cherie Federico: "This year's festival is even bigger than I anticipated"

"I've added ten more masterclasses, expanding from them just being on the Friday to the Saturday as well, which means festival visitors will be coming to York for longer – and this is a festival that raised nearly £500,000 for the York economy last year."

In its fifth anniversary year, Aesthetica Short Film Festival now stands as one of the significant players of the film festival circuit. "It's more like 375 films this year, with the special screenings and the guest programme from China, Cuba and Brazil," says Cherie, a New Yorker who made York her home after moving here in her student days.

"We'll have a special screening of Yorkshire poet Simon Armitage and Richard Heslop's film The Raft Of The Medusa, a tribute to filmmaker Derek Jarman, and we'll be teaming up with the National Railway Museum to present rare archive film, and we'll be marking our fifth anniversary by showing winning films from previous festivals with panel discussions afterwards."

Aesthetica Short Film Festival in 2015 will run for a full four days, as it did for the first time last year, with more masterclasses, screenings, special events and industry and networking sessions. The |"short", by the way, signifies the length of each film and not the length of the festival, for an event whose strands take in Family Friendly; Animation; Music Video; Artists' Film; Documentary; Thriller; Comedy; Dance; last year's successful new addition of Fashion; Advertising; Experimental and Drama, along with the special screenings.

Pinch Me, screening at Aesthetica Short Film Festival

An award ceremony on the Sunday night, hosted by According To McGee gallery's silver-tongued Greg McGee, will close the festival at the National Centre for Early Music with Best of Fest, category winners and the People's Choice all up for grabs.

As Cherie reflects on the festival screening 1,500 films from more than 65 countries in the past four years, she says: "I'm surprised that it's five years ago that we launched the festival". Then again, tempus fugit because Aesthetica also publishes an international arts magazine from York every two months and runs the ever-improving Aesthetica Art Prize each spring in York St Mary's.

"There hadn't been a film festival in York before and we needed to break new ground if we were going to launch one," she recalls. "It required a lot of time and attention to detail, as I sat down with my five-year plan, and when you get to year three and four, and you compare that plan to where we actually are, then I think we've been more than surprised at what's happened.

"I especially wouldn't have expected Aesthetica to have achieved the status of a BAFTA Qualifying Film Festival in only four years, and we're the first festival in the UK to receive that accolade in almost a decade."

This BAFTA Qualifying status means that all films selected by the Aesthetica programmers can be put forward for Britain's most prestigious film awards. "The reason we've received it so quickly is based on the quality of our programming," says Cherie. "You can't apply for Qualifying status, it gets given to you, and to reiterate what it means is that a film shown here in York at our festival is eligible for a BAFTA, so it will bring attention to our festival well beyond the city and Britain.

"This is why people are travelling from Australia, Germany, Chile, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, France, Canada and elsewhere for this festival."

Odditory, Monica Menez's film in the Fashion strand at ASFF 

Once again, the 2015 Aesthetica Short Film Festival attracted thousands of entries of a standard that made selection highly competitive. "Some people may think that 'Short' means less high quality, but it doesn't. Film-makers go on to make full-length feature films and go into making adverts or make the reverse journey from advertising to making feature films," says Cherie. "It's important for people to understand that the 'Short' film forms is a complete story in under 30 minutes."

Thursday's opening night party is fully booked; representatives from 25 film festivals from Britain and beyond will be attending the MeetThe Film Festivals event at the Middleton Hotel; the Yorkshire Museum will play host to screenings from 10am to 10pm each day; and St Peter's School and the Grand Opera House will be new venues this year.

"What I want more people to do next week is to step out of their comfort zone; to go to a genre of film they might not normally go to; to immerse themselves completely in a new experience," says Cherie. "That's one of the things that can make this festival so exciting."

For full details of the 2015 Aesthetica Short Film Festival, festival passes and tickets, pick up a programme around York or visit asff.co.uk/. See next Thursday's What's On for a further preview of the event.