UPDATE: OPEN CALL NOW CLOSED! THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR SENDING YOUR WORKS!

ℹ️ KONTEKST Film Festival is a London-based grassroots festival of ethnographic and experimental film. Our 2026 edition is called ENTANGLEMENTS, themed around multispecies encounters and relationships. Over two days, the programme presents work by emerging practitioners across moving image and installation. Curated by the KONTEKST Collective - a horizontal network of anthropologists, filmmakers, and artists - ENTANGLEMENTS brings urgent ecological and ethical questions into public space through art that is visceral, emotionally resonant, and accessible to audiences beyond academia.

👁️ in the face of the worsening climate emergency and the rise of techno-fascism and the extraction, are are looking to screen work that challenges the nature-culture binaries; that shows how humans, animals, plants, technology, and material culture are entangled, shape and impact each other; and that uncovers how exerting control over natural environment is also a way of controlling those who inhabit it. We are looking for submissions of short ethnographic and experimental films, which means that we are flexible in the genres we accept. Your film does not have to stick to non-fiction: we welcome the blurring of boundaries between documenting, imagining, speculating and creating. If your work plays with ideas of kinship beyond the human, questions our assumptions about nature, or reveals the hidden relationships between life, technology and power, we'd love to see it!

‼️ PLEASE NOTE: Unlike many festivals that programme films based on their artistic quality, our festival's approach is rooted in the discipline of visual anthropology, which in practice means that we are interested not only in what your film shows but in what it DOES in the world – how it was made, what impact it seeks to create, and the context it emerges from and speaks to. The extra information that you provide us in the 'custom form' part of the application WILL BE THE INTEGRAL PART OF THE SELECTION PROCESS - so please think through your answers! Poor engagement with these questions will lower your chances of being selected.

Your submission will be disqualified in the initial selection if:
🚫 Your film is longer than 25 minutes.
🚫 You are not an first-time / emerging / early career filmmaker -- This means that you have already had chances to show your work at major events / are established in the filmmaking industry / are a production company. MAKE SURE you include your previous experience as well as the screening history of your film in the application to avoid being marked down.
🚫 Your film does not show relation to the theme of ENTANGLEMENTS as it is prompted in the open call's Rules and Guidelines.
🚫 Your answers from the application form show insufficient engagement with the objective of the festival.
🚫 Your film submission relies on AI generated content uncritically rather than exploring the AI-human interaction in a self-aware, contextual and environmentally-conscious manner.
🚫 Your submission promotes views that are discriminatory or colonial.

💸 SUBMISSION FEES: In order to avoid receiving large amounts of automatic (and often unrelated) film submissions, we have set up the submission fee as £5/film. Please note that this is a completely voluntary donation - if you'd like to support KONTEKST, we invite you to chip in. If you'd like a fee waiver, please email us at hello@kontekstcollective.com with an email title saying exactly: KFF2026 FEE WAIVER. There is no need to ask us if you're eligible for a fee waiver (yes, you are) or present your film at this stage (you will have plenty of space for that in the application).

🔎 MAKE SURE YOU HAVE READ about THE OPEN CALL'S THEME, OBJECTIVE AND ELIGIBILITY RULES AND GUIDELINES BEFORE YOU SUBMIT: https://www.kontekstcollective.com/kff2026-entanglements

👉 Follow us on Instagram: @kontekst.collective

Rules & Terms

PLEASE MAKE SURE TO READ THE FULL RULES AND GUIDELINES ON OUR WEBSITE BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR WORK (https://www.kontekstcollective.com/kff2026-entanglements-welcome#rules). Here is the overview of the key ones:

1. KONTEKST Film Festival (KFF) is an annual event that aims to platform works by first-time, emerging and early-career filmmakers, artists and researchers, and use these works as activations for discussions about contemporary reality.

2. KONTEKST curates the kinds of festival spaces that function not just as sites of exhibition but also sites for open-ended research. Audience’s interactions with your work, providing feedback on it, and the collective reflections that your work generates will be at the core of the festival experience - which is why we seek in particular submissions from those emerging thinkers and makers who are interested in making a social impact with their proposed works.

3. KONTEKST wants to build a safe and inclusive space where disagreement is stimulating and discussion is encouraged. Films that portray a message of discrimination in any form (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism, casteism, +) are never tolerated.

4. We are only accepting short film entries with a max. of 25 minutes of runtime. This is a strict rule as we have a finite screening runtime and want to ensure we can platform many emerging artists at this event.

5. Films must have been directed/produced by emerging filmmakers at the beginning of their career. You may have shown your work at smaller events but ideally we will prioritise showcasing work by those who haven't got a platform yet. The festival will not platform films shown at major events, made by artists who have already had suffient chances to establish themselevs or by production companies.

6. Films both in English and non-English languages must have English subtitles (unless adding subtitles goes against creative intention).

7. Submissions are initially screened by the programming team on their eligibility. Eligible films will then be reviewed by a diverse panel of reviewers composed of artists, filmmakers, researchers, and curators with expertise in more-than-human perspectives and interdisciplinary practices. Reviewers will not have access to applicants’ personal information during initial assessment. You understand that, upon submitting your film to the festival, you authorise us to share your film with our review committee.

8. Upon accepting to have your film screened at KFF 2026, you automatically authorise us to use it in promotional materials such as festival brochures and trailers.

9. Selected filmmakers who will be attending the festival’s events are responsible for covering their own travel, accommodation and all other expenses.