The primary focus of the six day festival in Dresden is its International Competition and National Competition. Fictional and animated shorts up to a maximum of 30 minutes compete here in various categories for the highly coveted Golden Horsemen. Filmfest Dresden is Europe's best endowed short film festival with prizes and awards worth €60,000. In addition to the competition sections, the festival week provides an extensive range of special programmes with documentaries and experimental films, a children's programme, retrospectives and numerous country-based programmes as well as a supporting programme with panel discussions, master classes and workshops. Filmfest Dresden does not regard itself as merely an event for media professionals. Rather it is and foremost a festival that welcomes the general public in Dresden and the neighbouring regions.

In addition to the festival itself which is held annually in April, the post-festival tour and the open-air tour have established themselves increasingly as important mainstays for Filmfest Dresden. Since 2001 Filmfest Dresden has organised an extensive tour each year after the festival called the "Short Film Expedition" that visits about ten German cities. This permits prize winning shorts to also reach larger audiences beyond the festival itself. In addition there is the annual open-air tour in the summer which visits Bonn, Jena and Munich for instance and screens prize winners and audience favourites with the filmmakers present at the screenings.