**This is not just another film festival. This is a statement.**
The Berlin International Underground Film Festival (BIUFF) is a movement, launching with a clear and powerful mission: to build a **true ecosystem** of support for independent and defiant voices. We are not here to sell awards; we are here to **discover talent and build futures**.
**Our Mission: Discovered in Berlin**
We are based in Berlin, a city where art sprouts from concrete and defiance is in its DNA, because we believe that true cinema is not manufactured—it is **discovered**. BIUFF is a global platform for all independent creators—filmmakers, screenwriters, and photographers who dare to be different. We are looking for personal stories, bold perspectives, and artistic honesty.
**The "4U" Philosophy**
At the heart of our festival lies an award that transcends all categories: **The Grand Prize, our "4U" Trophy**. This ultimate honor is bestowed upon only one work per edition that powerfully embodies all four of our foundational principles:
- **Uncensored**
- **Uncompromising**
- **Unconventional**
- **Unbound**
**Our Model: Hybrid & Supportive**
BIUFF is more than just a competition; it is a **hybrid festival** and a true connection point. While our initial judging is conducted online, the journey culminates in a **live screening and awards event in the heart of Berlin**.
And in our deep commitment to supporting you, we've simplified the process: **with one single entry, your project is automatically considered for all relevant awards.** This is your chance to connect with a network of like-minded professionals from around the globe, supported by the Kariz Creative Hub.
**Honoring the Unsung Heroes**
Finally, we proudly honor the true architects of defiant cinema. For the first time, a major international award will be dedicated to the **Line Producers and Production Managers** who, with the art of resistance, make the impossible possible.
In a digital landscape saturated with soulless competitions and hollow laurels, we rise on a different foundation: **authenticity**.
**Join us. Submit your work to the beating heart of European independent cinema and show your voice to the world.**
SMOF in Argentina is the only animation film festival with a focus on stop motion that is currently taking place in South America.
An international and competitive festival, with a clear emphasis on audiovisual education and training, it promotes cinema and its creation as transforming tools for society.
Every year SMOF offers short film competitions, industry panels, workshops, exhibitions, clinics, seminars, laboratories, meetings, conferences, lectures given by leading figures in animation from Argentina and from different parts of the world, free of charge, to facilitate access to public to educational and training proposals of international quality.
The 16th edition of Arraial Cine Fest will be held from July 01th to 05st, 2026 online on the festival's official website and Porto Seguro Culture Center and SESC Porto Seguro.
Pimp My Movie is a festival aimed at young filmmakers (under 30) who want to improve their short films. The Cinémergence association supports the filmmakers by giving them access to more technical, logistical and financial resources. The aim is to help them improve their films through post-production aid.
The shortlisted films will be presented to a jury of industry professionals at our festival in spring 2026. The winners will receive one of our 3 prizes to support them in post-production and pimp their films!
The Galician Freaky Film Festival is the ultimate freak film and culture event. International in scope and specialised in fantasy cinema with themes of horror, science fiction or any subgenre that can be framed within the “freak” concept.
Founded in 2017 and based in Vigo, the GFFF showcases carefully selected films that are usually excluded from conventional distribution, presenting world and international premieres never before seen in Galicia, and also offering parallel activities such as workshops, professional meetings and special sessions for new talents.
The GFFF is a Competitive Member of the Méliès International Festivals Federation (MIFF), a global network of genre film festivals spanning 21 countries and more than 800,000 attendees per year. This membership allows the festival to award the prestigious Méliès d’Argent to the best European fantastic short film in its official selection.
The GFFF's commitment to artistic excellence and community engagement is recognized with the prestigious EFFE Label (Europe for Festivals, Festivals for Europe), Europe's quality stamp for remarkable arts festivals.
Join our ranks, freaks!
Only for Spanish Filmmakers.
The Emerging Spanish Film Festival, dedicated primarily to new filmmakers, supports independent cinema to foster alternative auteur cinema, contributing to the development of filmmaking. Among its fundamental objectives is the dissemination and promotion of filmmakers from Castilla-La Mancha and Spain, but especially from the city of Albacete.
Calella Shorts Film Fest was born with the ambition of becoming a meeting point for young creators, film lovers, and professionals in the audiovisual world. This festival celebrates creativity, narrative innovation, and emerging talent, offering a platform for new filmmakers to showcase their work and connect with a broader audience.
The first edition of the festival will take place on June 12, 2026, in one of Calella’s most iconic cultural venues: Sala Mozart, a historic theater that embodies the artistic spirit of the city and provides the ideal setting for a day dedicated to cinema.
The festival proudly collaborates with INS Bisbe Sivilla, whose students will present several of their audiovisual projects. Their participation turns the festival into not only a cultural event, but also an educational and professional experience. It fosters hands-on learning, creative development, and exchange between students, teachers, and industry experts.
Young directors will have the opportunity to see their work on the big screen, receive feedback from the audience and the jury, and be part of a program that highlights emerging talent from Calella and the entire Maresme region.
Calella: a city with a cinematic soul
Located between the Mediterranean Sea and the Montnegre Natural Park, Calella is a vibrant coastal city with a rich cultural heritage. Known for its beaches, tourism, and Mediterranean character, Calella has also become a natural setting for film productions, photo shoots, and audiovisual projects.
Over the years, its streets, beaches, and iconic corners have attracted producers and filmmakers who see Calella as an open-air film set. Its blend of historical architecture, picturesque locations, and natural landscapes creates an inspiring environment for visual creativity.
The Calella Shorts Film Fest aims to strengthen this connection between the city and cinema, celebrating artistic vision and local talent while promoting film culture throughout the region.
What you will find at the festival
• Screenings of selected short films
Works by young talents, students, and emerging creators across various genres and styles.
• Special participation of INS Bisbe Sivilla
Audiovisual projects by students that reflect the creativity and dedication of the school’s training programs.
• Talks and sessions with guests
Conversations with filmmakers, audiovisual professionals, and expert educators.
• Awards and recognitions
A professional jury will evaluate and reward the most outstanding works for their creativity, technique, and originality.
• A warm and cultural atmosphere
Sala Mozart provides a welcoming, cinematic environment for all attendees.
We are a small festival that started with the sole objective of supporting and disseminating the many short films that are created year after year all over the world. To support new and not so new authors.
We are a group of film fanatics and our festival is not for profit but to enjoy and have a good time, that's why we have chosen Humour, Comedy and Smile as the genre to take the reins of our adventure.
Me Mondo Fest. seeks to share audiovisual creation in short film format with as many people as possible and to support the short film as a form of creativity in itself and not just as a means to reach feature films.
We seek to bring film screenings and audiovisual art closer to the general public by trying to move away from the usual cinemas and venues for this medium. Taking the projectors out of the cinemas and placing the moving image in different environments that provide a different way of assimilating the works.
SorsiCorti is a Short Film Festival that combines conviviality and interest in the art of the short film.
SorsiCorti was born from passion for cinema and desire to explore innovative and experimental trails of short films.
Careful and accurative selection carried out by an evaluation committee made up of experts cinephiles, allows that only high quality short films access the program projection.
SorsiCorti has developed a strong collaboration with the young cultural reality of the Piccolo Teatro Patafisico in Palermo, who also became the official location of the live screenings. However, various events are realized around in town.
Salut! We are MONTIFF • Montpellier Indie Film Festival, an international film festival with screening events in enchanting Montpellier, France, and a member of IBERIFF • Iberia Indie Film Festivals. IBERIFF celebrates independent artists and showcases new productions from across the globe in Montpellier (MONTIFF), Madrid (MADRIFF), Barcelona (BARCIFF), València (VALÈIFF), Seville (SEVIFF) and Lisbon (LISBIFF).
MONTIFF shares the mission of its associate festivals in supporting emerging talents, encouraging artistic exploration, fostering networking, promoting cultural exchange, engaging with the local community, and providing a platform to celebrate and showcase the work of independent filmmakers.
Fiction, animation, documentary, and experimental films of any genre or subject are welcome!
QURTS is a festival dedicated to short films created from the margins: queer, anti-ableist, anticolonial, trash, low-budget, anti-class, and feminist cinema. All works that exist outside the established canon have a place here.
In its third edition, QURTS centers intersectionality within the LGTBIQ+ community through five short films created by independent audiovisual makers. Founded in 2023 in Plaça del Raspall (Vila de Gràcia, Barcelona), the festival is committed to an intergenerational dialogue that is open to everyone, free, and accessible.
The 2026 edition of the QURTS Festival will take place between March and April and will include two screenings: one in Barcelona and one in Vallbona d’Anoia.
PLEASE READ!
Transterritorial Underground Film Festival – 22nd Edition (2026)
The Transterritorial Underground Film Festival is an annual, self-managed and decentralised event that, since 2005, has brought together venues and exhibition spaces in various cities across Latin America and other territories. Its identity is based on the free circulation of audiovisual works, formal experimentation, aesthetic research and the visibility of works that remain outside industrial or hegemonic circuits.
The festival receives and exhibits audiovisual productions of all kinds: unpublished, experimental, marginal, independent, community-based or simply outside the commercial logic of contemporary cinema. It is screened in unconventional, community, cultural and self-managed spaces, creating a trans-territorial network that operates as a social, political and emotional tool.
Thousands of works have passed through this network in its twenty-year history, transforming the relationship between filmmakers, programmers and viewers. The 22nd edition continues this quest, expanding the modes of exhibition and maintaining a programme connected with emerging languages, aesthetic risk and subjectivities expressed from the margins.
The selected works may be screened at any venue in the network, in satellite screenings or in subsequent travelling cycles, always in non-commercial contexts and with cultural, educational or community objectives.
The participating venues in 2025 included screenings in Tigre, Quilmes, Ituzaingó, Berazategui, Necochea, Pehuajó and CABA (Buenos Aires), Rio Cuarto (Córdoba), Rosario (Santa Fe) and Tucumán in Argentina; Pamplona and Medellín (Colombia), Punta del Diablo (Uruguay) and Berlin (Germany).
Cartoon Club – International Festival of Animation Cinema, Comics and Games, now at its 42nd edition, is one of the best known festivals on the Italian scene.
It is a remarkable window for animation, short films in particular, including fiction, educational, experimental, and computer graphic works, with a whole section solely dedicated to comics: Riminicomix.
The Festival features SHORT ANIMATED FILMS in various sections:
The CARTOON CLUB AWARD: open to short animated films made by professional filmmakers and production companies.
The SIGNOR ROSSI AWARD: open to animated shorts made by secondary school and university students, and by the students of animation film schools.
The CARTOON KIDS AWARD: open to animated shorts aimed at a children’s audience. Among the films selected for the ‘Cartoon Club Award’ and the ‘Signor Rossi Award’ sections, the Festival artistic direction will select, at their own discretion, some titles which will then be judged by an all-children’s jury who will determine the winner.
The CARTOON JUNIOR AWARD: open to short animated films realized within workshops for children, in Italy or abroad.
The CARTOON CLUB AI AWARD: open to fully AI-animated shorts made with AI tools by students, professional filmmakers, and production companies.
The CARTOON CLUB ENVIRONMENT AWARD: among the films selected for the ‘Cartoon Club Award’ and the ‘Signor Rossi Award’ sections, the Festival artistic direction will select, at its discretion, the title which best represents environmental protection topics.
INTERNATIONAL PANORAMA: a non-competitive section open to European and non-European animated short films.
Furthermore, the festival features:
- exhibitions;
- educational and social projects;
- workshops in local schools;
- one of the most popular and entertaining Cosplay conventions in Italy.
- publication of books and catalogs.
The festival takes place in Rimini in various locations, from downtown to the beach, in the month of July.
The Festival de Cinema de Terror de Sabadell, celebrates the Seventh Edition of our Fiction Short Film Competition.
They have space for all the short films of Terror, Gore, Thriller, Fantastic, Science-Fiction, Dark Humor or Freak, in all their meanings and variants.
Festival Ull Nu:
It is a space to encourage, spread and fertilize creativity, art, culture and young talent.
It is a meeting point, exchange and dialogue between young creators coming from all over the Pyrenees and professionals from the film and audiovisual industry.
It is an alternative, original and innovative leisure proposal that aims to promote and bring to Andorra new proposals and audiovisual trends.
It is a unique experience, a festival of cinema and audiovisual.
Our Festival celebrates the creativity, effort, and courage it takes to make cinema in the North. For this reason, FIC Chihuahua aims to be a meeting point that showcases new voices, strengthens networks among filmmakers, and contributes to the promotion of emerging talent in Mexico and around the world.
Throughout its history, FIC Chihuahua has had different editions in both format and scale: sometimes it has been produced on a larger scale, and other times in a more intimate and compact way. This does not mean the Festival “doesn’t happen”; on the contrary, it reflects a responsible, good-faith decision to keep it alive, adapt it to each year’s real possibilities, and ensure that—regardless of size—the mission is fulfilled: to select, recognize, and give voice to cinema.
Each edition is unique. What truly defines FIC Chihuahua is not the size of the production, but its commitment to talent and to the stories that deserve to be seen.
The 15th FICCI-ON - Ciudad Rodrigo International Film Festival aims to promote educational, social and spiritual films made around the world.
The theme of the festival will therefore be educational, social and values-based; including all those films that promote child development in all its aspects.
Values-based films that deal with the subject of human rights, as well as intercultural dialogue. There will also be room for films with ethnographic themes, social denunciation or commitment to the development of the culture of Peace. Regarding spiritual themes, this is a very broad section where religious and/or spiritual films will be included, regardless of the confession and creed of the film and its authors.
