Making its fourth appearance on 12th October 2025 and again at our beautiful home at Etcetera Theatre in Camden, London, Noli is the festival for short films too experimental, too daring, too real or simply too long for the mainstream circuit.
Our third edition was our most successful yet and continued our mission of building a network of like-minded artists and collaborators across London and beyond. Our fourth edition promises to be even more special as our name spreads further both at home and abroad- this is your chance to be part of something that matters.
We are looking to champion a British New Wave of filmmaking, from narrative to essay to experimental films that have a unique perspective on cinema and on modern life. We love pieces that eschew traditional, commercial narratives in favour of a bold vision, innovative techniques, and a clear aim in perspective & idea on the world through art.
Art needs to reclaim its lost sense of verve, daring to push the held conventions of current cinema and society to usher in a new wave of creation and reflection. The medium is currently stagnant and we want to be the change we wish to see by bringing art back to its grass-roots approach, jumpstarting an unshackled form of cinema that is once again subversive, in the name of entertaining avant-garde fables, piercing essay films, innovative and exciting animations or art pieces, or honest and well-crafted narratives.
We want to reflect the new, in a way that is authentically inclusive of fringe artists that are truly contributing to the medium but feel like they have no home, whether you've frequented the institutional channels like BFI, or are indie through-and-through.
As such, we are looking for realised FILMS.
Previous programmes included a pulpy modern noir following an online erotic fiction writer trying to inspire new ideas by stranding his real-life lovers in overlapping fantasies and dreams until reality itself begins to dissolve, a satirical punk-DIY essay film with an acid tongue, tying in blues music with the royal family, parallel Pierrot puppets, a Bill Forsyth-esque comedy showing an alienated young night security guard trying to make friends wherever he can, a striking Daido Moriyama & Bresson-inspired hard-hitting drama on a subversive nocturnal journey, a beautiful documentary about a reclusive author living in a yurt in Normandy, a poetic reflection on the distance between an immigrant's life in the far east and life in England with images worthy of Hou, a vision of UFOs and fairies on an English common, a moodily dreamlike experimental number following the pain of a man with a TV for a head, sun-drenched aquatic journeys along the Cornish coast, a scathingly hilarious mockumentary take on the day in the life of a dishevelled Tory MP and a showcase of animations that displayed raw emotion and hand-crafted talent.
This is exactly what we love!
Our previous events have been sell-outs, with an audience comprised of the general public, fellow film-makers and industry professionals.
We want to establish an independent network of our own that values cinema and creativity, outside of the corporatised events that have come to dominate the scene.
We're looking to fill a programme running to roughly three hours.
All submission costs go towards helping us to keep this festival running.
With this event, you are buying into cinema culture, which means having an atmosphere to be part of, a place to hang out, your own corner of London in a medium that can often be isolating and exclusive.
NOLI is all about cutting-edge cinema, where you can join us in standing for something exciting and true!
We are different to the usual festival set-up, as we are not about industry griping, but giving fresh & passionate talent a chance to contribute to something meaningful and sustainable and establish a network of (y)our own.
Hence – TOO LONG, TOO DIFFICULT, TOO REAL.
Ie. – TOO CREATIVE. TOO HUMAN.
We are named in honour of Jacques Rivette’s opus ‘Out 1’. Rivette scrawled the Biblically-derived message ‘Noli Me Tangere’ (‘do not touch me’ in Latin) across 13-hours worth of film canisters to indicate he did not want the work cut further; this instruction is sometimes included now as the film’s subtitle. We hope to carry forward his uncompromising but generous spirit.
We are not looking for:
- Visual Art pieces without a clear, personal perspective
- Films with graphic sexual assault or violence (if your film includes sexually violent or violent imagery, but is still a fully-realised piece, please just add a content warning on your submission).
- Loose projects that aren't fully conceptualised
