IPFF is on the path towards its fifth edition! Once again, we will celebrate short portrait cinema and art which explores, educates, and transforms.
PHILOSOPHY
A portrait is an image heavy with meaning. Layered and multifaceted, it has a visual, psychological, material, emotional and spiritual dimension. It can be political, conceptual, poetic. Or something else.
A portrait always undergoes a transformation. It imitates and repeats life, but becomes something or someone new along the way. It changes its original subject while capturing it. Then the portrait is transformed again through the mind of every brave interpreter.
A film portrait is a soul in the form of light encountering the canvas of the white screen while pairs of eyes are staring at its vastness. It is a trace. And a reverie. It is past, present, and future intertwined.
FOCUS
The portrait is the focus of the films that will be screened at the IPFF. We are looking for portrait films that have already been completed, as well as such that will be created with the concrete idea of 'portrait'. Of a person. A group of people. An object. Something invisible, but substantial. Of the self.
WELCOME
IPFF welcomes a wide range of films and filmmakers: students, professionals, from low budget to big-scale productions, alternative and independent films by individuals and by collectives or institutions.
AIM
IPFF aspires to bring together artists and viewers who sincerely long for enrichment with art, intellectual discussion, and an experience of cinema through a new prism - that of the portrait film.
CHARACTER
IPFF is a hybrid event. A symbiosis of intriguing live encounters and memorable virtual experiences. An interweaving of portrait cinema from around the world with debates, lectures, workshops.
DREAM
We dream and imagine that the IPFF is for those who profoundly need art and excitement. And for the ones who believe in cinema’s power to change us for the better. For the unafraid to search within the screen even when it offers a strange and experimental viewpoint, or difficult questions about human rights, war and the ecological crises of our shared present.
The awarded films in each category are determined by an international jury of professionals with impressive accomplishments in their respected fields: film practitioners, academics, film critics, culturologists, authors, journalists. Presenting their different points of view, they distinguish the best films among the Official Selection of the festival.
IPFF will award the best portrait creations with:
The grand prize IPFF 2025 - MAYA Award*
- An invitation to the IPFF festival days in Sofia within the following edition - IPFF 2026 - covered by the IPFF
- specially made statuette
- books and publications, specially selected by the festival team, dedicated to the portrait in various arts
- digital laurels ‘Maya Award IPFF 2025’
Award for the most wonderful portrait creation in each category
- specially made statuette
- books and publications, specially selected by the festival team, dedicated to the portrait in various arts
- digital laurels ‘International Portrait Film Festival - Most Wonderful Film Award’
IPFF also presents a special award for a Film Dedication about the contribution of a person or about a cause aiming towards a brighter and better world
- specially made statuette
- digital laurels ‘International Portrait Film Festival - Film Dedication Award’
Digital laurels ‘International Portrait Film Festival - Official Selection’ for all selected films
*The MAYA Award is named after a brilliant filmmaker, activist for avant-garde cinema, poet, true experimenter, film theorist, and dancer Maya Deren. Her magical short works, portraits of herself, or of dancers, or of strange phenomena, have been and will always be a source of inspiration for film artists and for everyone willing to experience cinema, dive into it, think and talk about it with passion.
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May 2025
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Thomas Harman
April 2023 -
December 2022
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Les filles de Méduse
November 2022 -
Nicole Spring
January 2022
