Blog: Film festivals

The American Motion Pictures Festival (AMPF) is a celebration of identity, movement, and memory, organized by a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization — showcasing films that reflect the experience through the eyes of diverse creators. The festival provides a platform for voices that explore heritage, belonging, transformation, and the intersections of cultures.

Held Monthly and Annually in Greater Atlanta, the festival features a curated selection of narrative features, documentaries, shorts, and experimental films from across the United States and around the world.

Why is this the best and most effective film festival?
First and foremost, it is run by a non-profit organization. All your fees is spend to promoting your film.

American Motion Pictures Festival offers filmmakers a launchpad in the fast-growing place where multicultural narratives thrive amid world-class production capabilities.

Now Accepting Submissions
We invite filmmakers, actors, producers, and storytellers from all backgrounds to submit their works. Whether you're an emerging voice or an established artist, this is your opportunity to share bold, meaningful, and underrepresented stories with engaged audiences and industry professionals. We welcome films in any language, with a strong emphasis on cross-cultural perspectives, hybrid identities, and unique storytelling.

Selected films will be featured in a vibrant program including:
⦿ Screenings
⦿ Filmmaker Q&As
⦿ Panel discussions
⦿ Industry networking events
⦿ Community outreach

You are not submitting a film. You are submitting a screenplay.

The EvokeStory.ai International Screenplay Fund is an international screenplay competition built on one idea: a writer should not have to write in a borrowed language to be read.

Most international competitions ask for English. That single requirement filters out thousands of writers before a page is read, not for the quality of their story but for the cost of a translation. We removed that filter.

WRITE IN YOUR OWN LANGUAGE

Entries are accepted in seven languages, each competing on equal footing: Turkish, English, Arabic, French, Spanish, German and Portuguese. Your screenplay is read and judged in the language you wrote it in, against entries in that same language only. Arabic is read in its own right-to-left screenplay format.

FOUR FINALISTS FROM EVERY LANGUAGE

Two short and two feature screenplays are selected in each of the seven languages, for a total of 28 finalists. Every finalist receives a one-year EvokeStory Pro plan, worth 359 USD, whether or not their project goes on to be funded.

TRANSLATION IS ASKED OF FINALISTS ONLY

You do not pay for a translation to enter. An English version of the screenplay is requested only once you are a finalist, together with your project file, so that the main jury can read all 28 finalists in a shared language.

TEN PROJECTS ARE FUNDED

From the 28 finalists, the main jury selects five features and five shorts. Each selected feature receives 10,000 USD and each selected short receives 5,000 USD: 75,000 USD in total, and more than 85,000 USD in total prize value once the finalist plans are counted. Finalists are announced on October 15, 2027 and the funded projects on November 20, 2027.

NO GENRE RESTRICTION, RIGHTS STAY WITH THE WRITER

We take no option, no percentage and no credit on your work. The award is a development grant. The Fund exists to move a screenplay one step closer to being made, not to acquire it.

OPENING WINDOW

Screenplays submitted between September 10 and October 1, 2026 carry no entry fee. Festhome applies its own submission fee, which is shown at checkout.

The Fund is run by EvokeStory.ai, a screenplay and story development platform available in the same seven languages, founded by film director, producer and screenwriter Burak Varlık, who also founded Beşiktaş Senaryo Ajansı, a screenwriting agency in Istanbul, and has worked with hundreds of writers in its workshops. Writing your screenplay on the platform is not required and gives no advantage in judging.

Evoke Your Next Story

www.evokestory.ai/film-fund

Festival Latinoamericano de Cortometrajes LAPACHO — 20th Edition

The LAPACHO Latin American Short Film Festival celebrates its 20th edition in 2026, organized by the Instituto de Cultura del Chaco, in the city of Resistencia, Argentina.

Founded in 2003, Lapacho was created as a space to bring new cinematic perspectives closer to the community and, throughout its history, has become a meeting point for the exhibition and circulation of regional and Latin American audiovisual production. After its last edition in 2023, the Festival returns in 2026 to reconnect filmmakers, students and audiences from the region.

The 20th edition will take place on October 29, 30 and 31, 2026, with the Complejo Cultural Provincial Guido Miranda as its main venue, alongside activities at the Club Social de Resistencia and the Centro Cultural Ercilio Castillo. All Festival activities are free and open to the public.

The Festival will feature three competitive sections: Latin American Competition, Regional Competition and University Competition, aimed at promoting the exhibition and circulation of short films and creating spaces for encounter and exchange between filmmakers, works and audiences.

As part of its training and development program, Lapacho also brings back the “Lapacho LAB” Project Incubator, dedicated to short film projects in development. Three projects will be selected to participate in a professional mentoring process focused on Directing, Production and Screenwriting, including exchange sessions and a final pitching session during the Festival.

Lapacho is a space to discover new voices, share perspectives and strengthen the circulation of Latin American and regional cinema.

October 29–31, 2026 — Resistencia, Chaco, Argentina.

FEST - NDNFF #23
19th-27th of June of 2027 | Espinho, Portugal

FEST – New Directors | New Films Festival is an all-encompassing celebration of the new tendencies of world cinema. The event focuses on a competitive and non-competitive showcase of the most promising new figures and works from around the globe.
The 23rd edition of the festival will take place between the 19th and the 27th of June 2027, in the seaside town of Espinho (Portugal).

The selection is divided into several categories which include Feature Film and Short Film competitions in the Fiction, Documentary, Animation, Experimental Non-Narrative formats, as well as content adequate for children and teenagers. The event also includes non-competitive sections that range from retrospectives to feature length and short film showcases.

WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?
We are accepting films under the following formats:
A) Fiction and Non-Fiction feature films (minimum length is 55 minutes) from directors who are on their first or second feature-length project, regardless of age.
B) Fiction, Documentary, Animation, and Experimental Short films (up to 54 minutes of duration) from directors who have completed no more than two feature films, regardless of age.

Candidates must choose one of the available submission categories. Do not worry if your film fits different categories (Ie: Hybrid productions), as all submissions will be considered for the different competitions. If your film is also eligible for the NEXXT competition (focused on academic productions) but you wish the film to be considered for all other competitions please mention in the comment section of the submission the academic institution where the film was produced. If you have any doubts at all please do not hesitate to contact us at films@fest.pt.

Throughout the years' FEST has selected for its feature film competitions films such as Celine Song’s “Past lives”; Ainhoa Rodríguez´s "Mighty Flash"; Teodora Mihai´s “The Civilian”; Anders Ølholm and Frederik Louis Hviid with "Enforcement"; Julie Lecoustre, Emmanuel Marre´s “Zero Fucks Given”; P.S. Vinothraj “Pebbles”; Eugen Jebeleanu´s “Poppy field”; and Valdimar Jóhannsson´s “Lamb”, all of this on the fiction side, then in the Documentary side, Karima Saidi´s "A way Home", Michał Edelman´s "Last Knights Of The Right Side", Franz Böhm´s "Dear Future Children" among many others.

FEST’s Short Film sections are known for its wide variety of styles and filmic visions, having been throughout the years a platform for the launch of new artists such as Govinda Van Maele (Luxembourg), Christos Massalas (Greece), Mati Diop (France), Lukas Dhont (Belgium), Adriano Valerio (Italy), Patrick Vollrath (Germany), Ninja Thyberg (Sweden), Manuel Abramovich (Argentina), Daria Belova (Russia), Simon Mésa Soto (Colombia), Aga Woszczynska (Poland), Jela Hasler (Switzerland), as well as hundreds of other up-and-coming filmmakers.

FEST also includes a series of other activities that run parallel to the festival, in particular, FEST – Training Ground (one of Europe’s largest film forums) and FEST – Pitching Forum (film project competition), and others. For more information please visit our website at www.fest.pt

Interactive Festival where the public enjoys Short Films, theater, music and surprises.

The public participates in an active way during the event.

We accept any gender except Horror. Open to all types of filmmakers, whether professional or amateur.

The festival will be held in the town of Gavà, Barcelona (Spain), in mid-February. The X Edition will take place on Saturday, February 13, 2027.

Curto Criativo, the award for short film screenplays, is a Brazil-based competition open to screenwriters worldwide, from beginners to experienced professionals. We evaluate the story, not the production, so your script is welcome whether the short film has been shot or not. Our jury, composed of experienced screenwriters and filmmakers, is looking to discover new voices in the industry.

We accept short film scripts across seven genres: Animation, Comedy, Drama, Experimental, Fantasy/Science Fiction, Children's/Youth Live Action, and Suspense/Horror. Screenwriters worldwide can also enter the Best International Screenplay category, with scripts accepted in English or Spanish.

Winners are announced at an in-person awards ceremony at the Museum of Image and Sound (MIS-SP), in São Paulo.

Unique Location :

ONE Country ONE Film is a unique festival festival taking place in two different venues located in the same beautiful countryside area in the heart of France.

Unique Concept :

Every film selected is the sole representative of its country in each of the following categories : Feature Films, Short Films, Children Films. Every year a Country is honored and several films are selected from that country. Since its creation in 2010, ONE Country ONE Film has selected 120 countries.

Send your film (short or feature, animation, fiction, experimental or documentary) and be the only one to represent your country at ONE Country ONE Film 2027 -18th edition!!

In recent decades, and at one time to the emergence of new technologies that have ended up scanning most of the processes of the film, the documentary has known a notorious and systematic growth around the world. In our country, and for more than one decade, a production before linked almost exclusively to fiction has been swelling their ranks with new topics, new approaches, new geographies, new dilemmas.

It is in this context that FIDBA is proposed as the 1st. International Film Festival dedicated to this genre which films with the same fans - as long as we believe that the forms and the doings of the documentary film are different from those of the fiction - may meet and dialogue among them and with the public. If the documentary is a meeting point for the FIDBA, it is insofar as it proposes an interpellation to the little-known memoirs, disturbing present and (our) future in suspension. FIDBA will then be an approach not only among audiences, filmmakers and thinkers linked documentary but also in relation to the always stimulating possibilities that allow you to open this space to other border and heterodox expressions framed inside of what we would call "non-fiction" and that encourage us to dialogue with contemporary expressions that go beyond even the scope of the film.

FIDBA will pay special attention to those filmmakers for whom cinema is linked to a form of research and knowledge of the world that surrounds us as to the portrait of human beings whose conditions of life, in certain historical and social contexts, allow you to ask us about our. It is, therefore, authors who not only reflect reality but also ethical and moral relationship which involves filming the other.

FIDBA aims to become a point of support for filmmakers seeking to widen the perception of reality and to films which represent a step forward in the effort to understand it and anticipate it. So, it will make focus on films whose aesthetic originality put at risk not only an idea of the documentary but also a thought about the same film and its possibilities. Since this focus implies questioning the status of the real front of the camera or of the film in relation to reality, this is as inseparable from the mediations that arises.

Born in 2009 in order to highlight and encourage artistic expression, film and cultural identity of the region. Promoting the permanence of cultures and strengthening the cultural policies of the city as a mechanism for citizen and community participation; thus supporting the development, exhibition and dissemination of film and the visual arts in the city of Guadalajara de Buga and Valle del Cauca; proposing dialogue between the various expressions of art today and their participation mechanisms mainly in the youth population. This festival seeks to create spaces for discussion, artistic and audiovisual creation in a participatory manner.

The festival became the first event of its kind in this area, for display, training, capacity building and collective on the subject of film and visual arts in Guadalajara de Buga and Valle del Cauca.

The "Aniwow" is the core activity of China (Beijing) International Student Animation Festival, which aims to encourage young animators to adhere to their artistic ideals, discover and cultivate new animators, cartoonists and new media artists with creative passion, original spirit and good artistic cultivation. The festival builds a bridge for students from different countries who love animation to exchange ideas, discuss academics and pass on friendship on a larger scale and at a higher level, and creates a new platform for international animation academic exchange with multiple interactions.

The competition comprises four categories: Animation, Comics and Picture Books, Digital Art, and Digital Games. The jury will comprise renowned professionals and scholars in animation, comics, digital art and games, as well as senior representatives of relevant institutions. Works will be assessed on their ideas, originality and artistic quality, in accordance with the principles of fairness and impartiality.

Tlanchana Fest, Film and Digital Art Festival is realized by Tlanchana Cultura Audiovisual A.C., in order to create a space for exhibiting the emerging talents of Mexico and the world, by uniting the elements that forms the basis of cinematographic creation in conjunction with the new media and digital art.

The eleventh Edition of Tlanchana Fest will be held from July 7 to 11, 2027 and will feature a series of screenings, conferences and workshops, as well as facilities and other activities that will be carried out virtually and in person and that will serve as an incentive for the work in cinematographic and digital art matters.

MADE is a project to promote corporate heritage, aimed at enhancing its historical memory and operational dimension through the use of a variety of languages and innovative forms. It focuses on the world of manufacturing, understood as an expression and synthesis of the culture of work, and aims to represent, narrate and disseminate the cultural heritage of business in a perspective that extends from the local area to international dialogue.

This year, for the 44th Rencontres du Cinéma Latino-Américain, a festival organized by the association France Amérique Latine in Bordeaux, The cinema team would like to propose for the 5th consecutive year an official competition of short films.

These 10 films selected by the employees and volunteers of the association will be presented to students who will award different prizes and use the short films as a study support.

The scholar work on and with the short films will start in september: the final answer of your participation in the official competition will be given at the beginning of december.

The Award winners will be notified after the Festival is concluded.

Information
The Festival reserves the right to place entries into alternative categories if they feel it is to the benefit of the title. Each submission must be entered separately and it cannot be withdrawn.

By submitting, you agree not to withdraw your film from the festival after it has been accepted by the selection committee. If your film is selected, the festival holds the right to show your film at a time and date of its choosing.

Project Drama is a curated online destination for compelling independent drama films from around the world. We showcase powerful stories, memorable performances and films that deserve to find a wider audience.

We welcome drama films that have completed their festival circuit, were overlooked by traditional festivals, or are ready to reach viewers online. Selected films will be featured on the Project Drama YouTube channel and supported with professional packaging and promotion.

Project Drama — where great drama lives.

RTV International Film Festival celebrates bold, original and emerging voices in filmmaking from around the world. Founded in Canada, the festival welcomes independent filmmakers, students and creators working across traditional and new forms of visual storytelling.

The inaugural 2026 edition will be held online. Selected films will receive recognition through RTV Official Selection, Finalist and Winner laurels, with selected projects also eligible to be featured on RTV.com for international discovery and promotion.

CIFF – Cittadella International Film Festival is an international film event held in the stunning medieval town of Cittadella (Padua, Italy)—a walled city rich in history, culture, and architectural beauty.

The festival is dedicated to promoting independent cinema from around the world, giving space to emerging filmmakers and established artists who craft stories that move, challenge, and inspire.

The prestigious Malta’s Tower Award (Premio Torre di Malta) is the festival’s top honor, awarded to the film that best exemplifies narrative innovation, visual impact, and artistic excellence. The award is named after the historic "Torre di Malta," a medieval landmark that stands as a symbol of the city’s cultural heritage.

CIFF welcomes short films, documentaries, feature films, experimental cinema, and animation, across all genres and languages. Screenings take place in spectacular historic venues, offering a cinematic experience deeply rooted in place and tradition.

CIFF is more than a festival—it’s a hub for exchange, with masterclasses, industry panels, Q&A sessions, and networking opportunities designed to connect creators and audiences worldwide.

LIVE SCREENINGS August 13-15 2027

“Actors must act, writers must write, filmmakers must make films… directors, producers, and audiences will come. That’s Entertainment.”

BRIFF – Bistrița Romania International Film Festival is now open for submissions for its 5th edition, taking place in August 2027 in Bistrița, Romania.

BRIFF continues its collaboration with ArtCastle Festival, a celebration of music, exhibitions, workshops and poetry held at the historic Teleki Castle, while remaining dedicated to bringing cinema into vibrant, unconventional and atmospheric spaces.
Over the past four editions, BRIFF has welcomed filmmakers from around the world and created opportunities for their films to be discovered and presented to audiences in unique locations.
Beyond the main festival screenings, BRIFF has also presented retrospective screenings of outstanding films from previous editions at venues including Gallery Garden, Soho Music Hall, the County Art Museum, and Ivory Restaurant & Lounge.
For 2027, our commitment remains the same: to discover distinctive voices, powerful stories and films that deserve to be seen — not only during the festival, but also through year-round screenings and special events.

All selected films will receive official BRIFF laurels.
Award-winning films and filmmakers will receive official Winner laurels and a Certificate of Achievement.
We welcome filmmakers, directors, producers and film teams from around the world to submit their work and become part of the 5th edition of BRIFF.

Submit your film and join us in Bistrița, Romania, August 13–15, 2027.

The Ibiza-based cultural association Mal del Cap, Cultura Mal Dita is opening the call for entries for short films competing as part of the “12th Mal del Cap International Short Film Festival”, one of the activities included in the “12th Mal del Cap Festival, Narratives Mal Dites”, which will take place in Eivissa from 28 November 2026 to 20 March 2027.

The “12th Mal del Cap International Short Film Festival”, hereinafter referred to as the Short Film Festival, will take place from 15 to 20 March 2027 in different cultural venues across the island.

The submission period will run from 7 September to 11 October 2026, both dates inclusive, and is open to creators from all over the world. Works must be submitted in digital format and may be fiction, documentary or animation.

All works will initially be submitted to the Official Competition Section. Once the submission period has ended, the Festival Organisation and its Selection Committee will determine which works are selected and, according to their characteristics, which sections they may be screened in and which awards they may be eligible for.

“Once again, we are looking for bold stories and ways of telling them that break away from the conventional, works that connect with people and are not afraid to experiment,” explains Pedro López, vice-president of Mal del Cap and co-director of the event. “This festival is an open space for free creativity, for sharing and for building connections between the most underground proposals on the international scene.”

Once again, this festival, which began in 2014 and is one of the longest-running festivals in the Pityusic Islands, features several sections and awards, with a total of €900 in prize money: the 1st Official Competition Award, the Youth Section Award — awarded by young students from Ibiza —, the Sebas Parra Award for the best socially themed short film — courtesy of the La Guerrilla Comunicacional association from Girona —, the Malalt Award — reflecting the association’s wildest spirit —, the Best Catalan-language Short Film Award, and the Audience Award.

For more information about the rules, technical requirements and submission form, please visit the official website at www.maldelcap.com or contact festival@maldelcap.com

THE DATES ARE APPROXIMATE, THE DEFINITIVE DATES FOR THE FESTIVAL CELEBRATION WILL BE COMING SOON

inDOCumentari is a film festival fully dedicated to the documentary genre, held in the city of Sabadell. Its mission is to promote and showcase documentary cinema as a tool for artistic expression, social reflection, and critical observation of contemporary reality.

The festival presents a diverse selection of short and feature-length documentaries from around the world, fostering cultural exchange and dialogue among filmmakers, audiences, and audiovisual professionals.

The Short Short Story Film Festival is a competitive international festival of films that tell a story in under six minutes.

For 2026, the 19th edition of the festival returns with a unique closed event. The festival celebrates brevity in film-making, with films from across the globe, both live-action and animated.

The festival consists of two programs, Heartstrings and Headtrip, each with a distinctive tone yet wide-ranging styles and topics.