1. ORGANISATION, DATES AND LOCATION
The Extraordinary Film Festival is produced and organized by the non-profit association EOP! (hereinafter referred to as “the organizers”) and will take place at the cultural center “Le Delta” in Namur from 5 to 9 November 2025, with a one-day version in 6 towns in the Wallonia-Brussels Federation during the week of 17 November 2025.
2. PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVES
The organizers aims to develop cultural activities, education, awareness-raising and collective reflection on the representation of people with impairments and/or disabilities, through a selection of Belgian and non-Belgian audiovisual works, both fiction and documentary, highlighting the realities of the people concerned.
In this way, the organizers aims to support the distribution, but also to encourage and promote the creation of films dealing with these subjects and the sharing of intercultural and universal experiences.
The organizer's primary aim is to organize a biennial international film festival on the theme of disability and impairment*. The festival is aimed primarily at the general public, as well as people directly or indirectly affected by disability and audiovisual professionals.
* Films MUST be related to the theme of disability and impairment. These include motor disabilities, sensory disabilities, mental disabilities, cognitive disabilities, autism and autism spectrum disorders, DYS disorders, multiple disabilities, disabling diseases (Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, lysonomal diseases, rare diseases).
Feature-length and short films (dramas, animations, docu-dramas, documentaries and experimental films), as well as short communication and awareness-raising films (clips) on the theme are allowed.
3. RULES AND REGULATIONS
To be admitted, each film must match the following requirements:
• Dealing with the theme of disability and impairment
• Short films: Films length > up to 45 minutes
• Feature films: Films length > more than 45 minutes
• Communication / awareness raising short films > up to 5 minutes
• The year of production of the film must be after 1 January 2023
• Films whose original language is not French must be submitted with French or English subtitles
• Films have to be available for Festival screening on .mov (ProRes 422) or .mp4 (codec H264) - 10 Mbs - 1920 x 1080 video file without subtitle
4. SUBSCRIPTION AND SELECTION
Entries for films must be submitted and completed no later than March 1st, 2025 midnight (UTC+2).
Participants MUST submit their film by online submission, with a screener link (like Vimeo or others).
All submission must contain at least the following mandatory fields:
• Title of the film
• Synopsis of the film (150 words maximum)
• Film’s category (fiction, documentary, animation, etc.)
• Film’s type (short, feature, short comm. and/or awareness-raising films)
• Country and language
• Phone number and email address of the responsible who submit the film (the person responsible will be contacted in case of selection or non-selection)
• Phone number and email address of the director and the producer
• E-mail and telephone contact details of the rightful owner(s) for Belgium, if the latter is (are) neither the director nor the producer.
Any incomplete registration, or sent by post, will not be taken into consideration.
NB: A film already submitted in a previous edition cannot be resubmitted.
5. SUBMISSION FEES
Short film:
• Early submission (1st/10/2024 to 30/11/2024 included): 7 €
• Regular submission (1st/12/2024 to 15/01/2025 included): 10 €
• Late submission (16/01/2025 to 1st/03/2025 included): 12 €
Feature film:
• Early submission (1st/10/2024 to 30/11/2024 included): 12 €
• Regular submission (1st/12/2024 to 15/01/2025 included): 15 €
• Late submission (16/01/2025 to 1st/03/2025 included): 17 €
Communication / awareness raising short films:
• Free > contact us at film@teff.be to obtain a waiver code
Please note that the submission fees help cover various costs related to the administrative tasks of the festival programming team and the selection committee.
Submission fees are non-refundable.
6. COMPETITION / AWARDS
Two categories of awards are proposed: Short films and Feature films
• « Grand prix RTBF »: pre-purchase and broadcasting rights on RTBF channels (Belgium National Broadcasting television)
• Jury awards
• Audience Awards
• And other institutional awards
The organizers reserve the right to modify all or part of the prizes awarded.
The jury is made up of personalities from the cultural and disability sectors (joint panel).
The decisions of the jury cannot be contested.
The prizes will be awarded at the closing gala on November 9, 2025. Only those directly involved in the winning film will be allowed on stage to receive the award.
7. SELECTION AND PROGRAMMING
7.1
A selection committee (hereinafter “the committee”), composed by the organizers and made up of men and women from a variety of backgrounds and experiences, will view all the films submitted. The Committee and the Festival programming team will jointly decide which films will be selected. They are totally sovereign in their choices and have the prerogative to decide arbitrarily on the selection of films for the Festival, without their decisions having to be justified in any way whatsoever.
Confirmation of the selection or not of each film will be sent to the respective responsible in May 2025.
The final decision on the programming, categorization and screening schedule of the films will be determined by the Festival's programming team. Their decisions are final.
7.2
No film may be withdrawn from the Festival’s program after the official announcement of its selection and the acceptance of this selection by the person responsible for the film, except by decision of the programming team.
7.3
If selected, the responsible party receives a more detailed email asking them to provide the organizers:
• Promotional material for the printed programme and the festival website (short synopsis, director's biography and photography, photos from the film, etc.).
• An HD digital version of the film (ProRes 422 or H264 – no DCP).
• The list of dialogues of the film in English or in French with the corresponding timecode.
• A trailer of the film (if you cannot provide one, you authorize the organizers to create one for the purposes of the festival), which may be used in the promotional material of the festival.
All the material requested must be sent within 30 days of the announcement of the selection (please check your spam regularly). The delivery of all elements, on time and in the correct format, is the responsibility of the film registrant.
In the absence of explicit acceptance, sending the elements listed in this article to the organizers constitutes tacit acceptance of the selection of the film in question.
8. BROADCAST RIGHTS
• No rental or screening fees will be paid by the festival for films selected and programmed. The selected films may be screened several times during the festival.
• The awarding (and acceptance) of a prize implies the agreement and guarantee by the rightful owner(s) to the festival organisers that the winning film may be screened (without broadcasting costs) a maximum of 2 times, as part of the TEFF “palmares” screenings, during the year 2026.
• At the end of the festival, the selected films could be screened in other regions of Belgium for non-commercial purposes (Best Of TEFF, TEFF TOUR, disability awareness sessions, etc). A broadcasting agreement will then be proposed to the rightful owner(s) in the weeks following the festival.
9. FILM ADAPTATIONS FOR ACCESSIBILITY
The copyright holder(s) will authorize the organizers to make a copy of the film in order to allow the creation of subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing in French, as well as the production of an audio description for the visually impaired. These adaptations, made to make the films more accessible, are entirely at the expense of the organizers, who are the entire rights holders.
It is preferable for those responsible to pass on to the organizers any DHH subtitles and/or audio descriptions that already exist.
The production time for these adaptations (more than 4 months at all) explains and justifies the selection of the films several months before the festival, and the importance of sending us the requested documents as soon as possible.
10. SHIPPING OF SCREENING COPIES
• Copies of the selected films must be sent within 30 days of the announcement of the selection by the organizers.
• The video file of the film must be sent online (deposit on our protected FTP server, or with We Transfer or other files transfer platform).
• If it is not possible to send the film online, it can be sent on a USB key, but these will not be returned after the Festival.
11. TELEVISION AND INTERNET BROADCASTING
In case of selection, the organizers will have the right to use a short extract of the film (maximum 20 seconds) in the official trailer of TEFF 2025 or in a story about the broadcasting of the film in the audiovisual media. Similarly, the trailer, stills from the film, or the film poster may be used to promote the film's screening at the festival and in the media.
The organizers will be allowed to publish the trailer of the film on the festival website and social networks.
12. INVITATION FOR THE DIRECTOR
The organizers wish to provide the greatest possible support to the filmmakers present at the Festival:
• Support for transport and/or accommodation could maybe be offered by the organizers to the directors of selected films (within the limits of TEFF's financial resources).
• The directors of all the selected films will receive an invitation and 2 accreditations for the full duration of the Festival in Namur. If the director is unavailable, this invitation may be used by a third party, subject to prior approval by the organizers.
13. EXCEPTIONAL CIRCUMSTANCES
In the event of force majeure preventing the festival from being held in person (such as, for example, the pandemic at Covid-19 in 2020/21), it could be held virtually, online via a secure web platform with access limited to “festival-goers” (by festival-goers, the organizers mean anyone with a ticket purchased from the organizers, enabling them to access the online broadcast). In the event of online broadcasting, the person responsible for the film must agree to this with the organizers. No film will be broadcast online without prior authorization.
14. BE-IN! PAN-EUROPEAN NETWORK
As part of our inclusive festival network, named BE-IN!, the contact details of the person responsible may be exchanged between the organizers of the 6 festivals participating in the network, for the exclusive purpose of sharing film suggestions and facilitating contact with the rights holders of these films. In accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (Regulation EU 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016, hereinafter ‘GDPR’), if the person responsible does not wish his/her details to be kept and shared within the BE-IN! network (for a maximum period of 3 years), a request by email to film@teff.be must be sent to the organizers so that the data can be deleted at the end of festival 2025
15. APPLICABLE LAW AND JURISDICTION
• The person responsible for registering the film agrees to have read and accept these rules and terms.
• She undertakes to be legally in possession, for the film proposed to the TEFF, of all forms and rights related to intellectual property and the right to privacy.
• By entering a film, the responsible accepts these rules in their entirety.
Submitting a film to our festival implies acceptance of these rules. Only the organizers are authorized to deal with the persons concerned in the event of a dispute.
In the event of a dispute as to the execution or interpretation of these rules, the parties undertake to settle their differences amicably before initiating legal proceedings.
If, despite this, legal proceedings are initiated, only the French version of these regulations and Belgian legislation will have the force of law; the courts of the Belgian legal system have sole jurisdiction to hear any such dispute.
More information about the Festival: www.teff.be
