Arquiteturas Film Festival – 13th edition – "Urban Age"
How can film help us reflect on the urban age we inhabit, and on the ways cities and territories are shaped by today’s social, political, and environmental challenges?
The 13th edition of the Arquiteturas Film Festival, themed “Urban Age”, turns its attention to the lived experience of urbanisation – from the material forms of architecture to the social and cultural dynamics that define contemporary cities.
This edition seeks films that explore the many dimensions of urban life: housing, infrastructure, public space, informality, environmental change, and social reproduction. We are interested in works that expose the contradictions of the city as a space of both opportunity and exclusion, solidarity and conflict, precarity and imagination. At a time when urbanisation permeates nearly every aspect of life, we must look beyond inherited conceptions of the city as a bounded settlement and engage with broader patterns of the urban.
The festival invites cinematic practices that highlight the embodied, emotional, and political dimensions of urbanisation – engaging with questions of race, class, gender, and ecology to rethink what it means to live together in the urban age.
We welcome diverse perspectives on film and architecture that resonate with this year’s theme, “Urban Age”. Submissions are open to films of any kind – documentary, fiction, or experimental – and of any duration, short or feature-length. An interdisciplinary committee will curate the programme in collaboration with the festival’s organiser, INSTITUTO.
Films must be submitted via Film Freeway by 2 November 2025. Alongside film screenings, the festival will host talks, tours, and installations, creating opportunities for in-depth discussion around the themes and research behind the films.
The Arquiteturas Film Festival will take place from 1–5 July 2026 in Porto, Portugal. Organised by INSTITUTO and directed by architect Paulo Moreira, the festival was founded in 2013 and has since become a platform for debating and disseminating architecture in dialogue with the visual and spatial arts, critical thought, and interdisciplinary collaborations.
The Arquiteturas Film Festival recognises the power of moving images as a vital tool for engaging with critical discourses in architecture and spatial thought. Our programme emphasises the thematic richness of the films we present, and to reflect this, we move beyond conventional prize categories. Instead, we introduce awards that resonate directly with the festival’s 2026 theme, “Urban Age.”
Award categories will be defined by the Jury, with a strong emphasis on recognising films that push boundaries, bring fresh perspectives, and challenge conventions in both content and form. This approach encourages innovative storytelling that captures the complexities of urbanity - whether rooted in the life of cities or extending beyond them to explore material, spatial, and social questions.
Each awarded film will receive a unique trophy, designed by South African architect Sechaba Maape during his 2024 residency at INSTITUTO and produced in collaboration with ArtWorks. In addition, a certificate will be issued to all directors of the awarded films.
Meet the Selection Committee and Jury:
The Selection Committee of the 13th edition of the Arquiteturas Film Festival is composed of Andrea Pavoni, Joana Pestana, Mira Samonig and Sofia Borges. The Jury includes Gustavo Imigrante, João Queirós, Klearjos Eduardo Papanicolaou, Luís Tavares Pereira and Rute Nieto Ferreira.
Andrea Pavoni is a researcher at DINAMIA’CET-Iscte. His work explores the relation between materiality, normativity and aesthetics in the urban context. He is a fellow at the Westminster Law and Theory Lab, and associate editor at the open access journal Lo Squaderno, Explorations in Space and Society. He is the author of Controlling Urban Events Law, Ethics and the Material (Routledge 2018) and, with Simone Tulumello, of Urban Violence. Imaginary, Security, Atmosphere (Lexington 2023).
Joana Pestana Lages (Lisbon, 1979) is an architect and researcher at DINÂMIA’CET-Iscte. She has developed extensive research on spatial justice, housing, and citizen participation in self-built territories. She currently coordinates the research project Care(4)Housing and leads the ERC Starting Grant 2025 project Housing Freedom, focusing on post-incarceration housing pathways. She co-founded ‘Mulheres na Arquitectura’ [Women in Architecture Association], bringing feminist and care-based approaches to space and spatial production. Her work bridges research, practice, and activism.
Mira Samonig is a PhD candidate and lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Arts. Her research focuses on the intersection of space, capitalism and far-right politics, working on developing a theory of ‘far-right urbanism’. She is a board member of the Viennese activist initiative Westbahnpark, which advocates for public space justice through performative interventions. In 2026, she will begin a one-year SIT-PLU Residency at Lungomare in Bolzano, starting in 2026 as part of the collective WOOPS (Work On Outrageous Public Spaces).
Sofia Borges studied Painting and Curatorial Studies at Lisbon's Faculty of Fine Arts. She works in research projects, documentation and artistic creation in collaborations supported by dialogue with local narratives through participatory processes in context of visual arts, public spaces, installation and cinema. Since 2019, she has been working in São Tomé and Príncipe. Her projects have been presented in informal locals, public spaces, film festivals, and art biennials like São Tomé and Príncipe Art Biennial (São Tomé, 2022), Vídeo Brasil Biennial (São Paulo, 2023), and Lucid Reverie curated by Hiuwai Chu and Raphael Fonseca (Porto, 2025).
