Freiburger Filmforum - Festival of Transcultural Cinema

We are thrilled to announce that the 21st edition of the FREIBURGER FILMFORUM - FESTIVAL OF TRANSCULTURAL CINEMA will take place from May 27 to June 1, 2025. Since 1985, the forum has been dedicated to screening films that sensitively portray current, historical, socio-political and cultural issues.

CALL FOR ENTRIES STUDENTS' PLATFORM

The upcoming edition marks a special milestone as our Students’ Platform celebrates its 10th anniversary. Fresh perspectives, critical thought and creative energy brought by students and upcoming filmmakers significantly enrich the field of anthropologically informed cinema. Once again, we would like to create a space for such filmmakers and their work.

CALL FOR ENTIRES: We are looking for films that closely observe the world, drive us into new modes of looking and listening, engage sensitively with the characters, and clarify their intent through the filmmaking process. We are keenly interested in works that engage, challenge and persist through notions of gaze, positionality, ethics and transcultural dialogue. Works creating synergy between form and content are of special interest to the selection committee.

The CALL is accompanied by a special category: RESOUNDING RESISTANCE - This program aims to acknowledge, appreciate, and invite works created under complex conditions of threat, violence and dislocation. We seek works that are sparked by individual reactions and attempt to locate themselves within the collective. This can be interpreted in various ways through films about filmmaking, films about the self (as a filmmaker), an awareness of the self in spaces of conflict, individual and collective responses to violence, inciting a sense of collective or community, and much more. We aim to advance individual activism towards strengthened collective responses against the culture of ignoring, silencing, and cancelling. Through this special category, the festival wishes to create spaces of solidarity and community for all those who find themselves in compromised situations and locations.

STUDENTS' PLATFORM

The Students’ Platform invites works from student and debut filmmakers, media artists, and visual anthropologists worldwide. Our goal is to showcase the diversity, creativity, and engagement of the next generation of filmmakers. Rather than a competition, the Students’ Platform serves as a forum for dialogue, discussion, and deliberation. It offers a space for film screenings followed by dedicated sessions where filmmakers can engage with the festival audience, experts from different fields and fellow artists.

We also want to emphasize that our understanding of a student goes beyond a university framework. Anyone who considers themselves a student of cinema from any background or age is eligible to participate in this section. The debut film section considers the first feature-length film made by a filmmaker. The Students’ Platform would like to facilitate a discussion between student filmmakers and first-time feature filmmakers to help them understand long-term engagement and larger productions.