Bucharest International Dance Film Festival is a platform for exquisite films that use movement as their primary language or the body as their main subject. Faced with the camera lenses, the body becomes the primary focus of cutting-edge arthouse films that challenge the audience to a lively exchange of stances on challenging politics, extreme emotions, concealed interpretations, and oddly beautiful aesthetics.

BIDFF encourages syncretism and dialogue between movement and diverse forms of cinema, from the more traditional ones to experimental or futuristic hybrid works. Besides film screenings, BIDFF organizes a VR showcase, lectures, public presentations, and intensive short film workshops. Each year in September, the festival takes place in multiple locations from Bucharest, Romania.

Taking place during a period in which society is faced with hardships caused by war, financial crisis, social division and the rise of radical and extremist discourses, the ninth edition of BIDFF (September 7 - 10, 2023) aims to present productions dealing with topics interconnected with ecology, technology, body transformations and connections between past and future. Clusters, the theme of the festival, is based on W. V. O. Quine's premise that no individual belief can be confirmed or refuted in isolation, but must be evaluated within a larger network of beliefs. Thus, the festival aims to create a space for dialogue and exchange of experiences.

In preparation for its anniversary edition in 2024, BIDFF wants to bring together diverse artistic and community clusters that influence each other, offering an alternative to social disunity. For four days, dancers, choreographers, visual artists, filmmakers, virtual reality creators, theorists and producers will be engaged in over 20 artistic events, structured in five interconnected sections characterised by diversity, multiplicity and openness.

BIDFF awards excellence, novelty and courage in filmmaking with a prize pool of 1500 euros.

Awards:
→ Best International Film (1000 Euros)
→ Best Romanian Film (500 Euros)
→ Special Mentions

Bucharest International Dance Film Festival invites filmmakers, choreographers and animators to submit their short films for the ninth edition of the festival, which will take place from September 7 to September 10, 2023, in Bucharest, Romania.

The competitional section is dedicated to short films only and is divided into International and Romanian. The board will take into consideration fiction, documentary and animation films that either use movement to explore an idea or speak about issues related to the body and the world of dance and performance. We also highly encourage you to apply if you have a short film that explores the future of art, questioning issues related to the ethics of collaboration, communication, and co-existence.

We are looking for:
→ films that don’t exceed 20 minutes in length, produced in the last two years;
→ films in the genres of dance film, screendance, dance for camera, musical, animation, fiction or documentary about the body or the world of dance, experimental shorts conceptually oriented around the idea of movement;
→ films with a minimum quality of Full HD (1920 x 1080).
Each director can submit a maximum of two films.

We are NOT looking for:
→ music videos, trailers or recordings of performances, films already submitted in the previous years to BIDFF, one-minute films, commercials, or home-made videos.

We offer:
→ money awards for Best International Film and Best Romanian Film;
→ free entry to all the events of the festival, excepting workshops that require a previous application.

Deadlines:
→ Regular: June 16
→ Late: July 14

All applicants will be informed about the outcome of their submission by July 31.

Overall Rating
Quality
Value
Communication
Hospitality
Networking
  • Fu LE

    I was honored to be awarded by your festival, thank you.
    Quality programmation with great awards :)

    September 2023
  • Thank you, BIDFF! We were honoured to be selected at your festival!

    September 2023
  • Great opportunity, very supportive and helpful organizers. Thank you

    September 2021
  • Ivan Skorik

    Really great selection and perfect presentation of works.. Excellent crew and communication. Thank you!

    December 2016