Swedenborg Film Festival

Guest Judge(s) for 2025: CHRIS PETIT and IAIN SINCLAIR

The Swedenborg Film Festival 2025 (SFF2025) invites entries of new films of 20 minutes or less from emerging and established independent filmmakers. Now a landmark event in the UK film calendar, the SFF has received a huge response from thousands of filmmakers around the world and has gained a reputation for the quality and diversity of its programming.

Prizes will be presented in several categories. Shortlisted films will be shown alongside invited screenings by the Quay Brothers and other leading international filmmakers.

The SFF supports all genres and encourages submissions that draw upon the diverse and radical traditions influenced by Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). Artists, writers and filmmakers influenced by Swedenborg include William Blake, Charles Baudelaire, Hilma af Klint, Jorge Luis Borges, Ingmar Bergman and many others. Films featured previously in the SFF have explored ideas of transcendence and symbolism, and themes have ranged from social reform to psychogeography.

Shortlisted films for SFF2025 will be screened during a live event at CURZON SOHO* on 6 December 2025, during which winners will be selected and announced by our guest judge(s). In addition to this, a longlist will run at Swedenborg House, London over successive days in December, with some named slots curated by individual members of the SFF2025 team.

*Curzon Cinema has been hired as the venue for this event and this is not part of the Curzon programme. They are not involved in the ticketing or content of the screening.

Former judges of SFF include:

2024: Xiaolu Guo
2023: Andrea Luka Zimmerman & Ben Rivers
2022: Keith Sargent and Lindsay Seers
2021: Samson Kambalu
2020: Melanie Manchot and John Smith
2019: Chloe Aridjis
2018: Susan Hiller
2017: Ali Smith
2016: Andrew Kötting
2015: Bridget Smith
2014: Peter Fillingham, Nora Foster and Sukhdev Sandhu
2013: Lech Majewski
2012: Gareth Evans and Jeremy Millar
2011: Rosie Cooper and Ian Hunt
2010: Nora Foster and Stephen McNeilly

Swedenborg House is a fully inclusive not-for-profit publishing house, gallery, museum and cultural venue based in Bloomsbury, London. It hosts a diverse and lively programme of events. Featured speakers and artists have included Simon Armitage, A S Byatt, Brian Catling, Jeremy Deller, Deborah Levy, Iain Sinclair, Marina Warner and many others.

“. . . a centre for the discussion of ideas, particularly the interface between the arts, philosophy and ethics—all trying to get to the heart of the human condition, and our place in the world.” —Ken Worpole, writer and social historian on Swedenborg House, 2021.

Information about previous film festivals and Emanuel Swedenborg can be found by following the website link above.