September 3, 2026
Between September 23–30, 39 provocative films questioning the ways in which we construct and interpret reality through images and stories will be screened in Bucharest, at Cinema Elvire Popesco and Apollo111 Cinema, as part of the International and National Short Film Competitions of Bucharest International Experimental Film Festival.
Conceived as two platforms dedicated to promoting new voices in cinema and supporting filmmakers and artists distinguished by the quality of their artistic vision and their commitment to formal innovation, the BIEFF.16 short film competitions explore the ways in which experimental cinema can destabilize the conventions of representation and open up new perspectives on the contemporary world.
The full festival schedule and tickets for individual screenings will be available on Eventbook starting Wednesday, September 9. The BIEFF.16 general passes are already available in four pricing tiers, following the implementation of a “pay what you can” policy designed to make the festival experience more accessible to a wide range of audiences, regardless of economic status.
Now in its sixth edition, the National Short Film Competition of BIEFF brings together ten unexpected local experiments that shape a new cinema in the truest sense of the word, decentralized both logistically – small-scale productions emerging from film schools, independent scenes, galleries and art residencies, made on filmmakers’ own personal laptops – and formally. Films by artists such as Nona Inescu, Alma Buhagiar, Cosmin Nicolae and Sebastian Mihăilescu informally form an alternative school of looking, mise-en-scène and essayistic filmmaking, an underground cinema scene that the festival has helped nurture over the years.
Selected from more than 1,500 short films submitted in response to the festival’s open call, which was launched at the beginning of the year, the 29 short films included in the 16th edition of BIEFF’s International Short Film Competition come from more than 20 countries around the world and offer a broad panorama of contemporary experimental cinema. The selection brings together works by visual artists, researchers and acclaimed filmmakers such as Elisabeth Subrin, Jyoti Mistri, Miranda Pennell and Radu Jude, alongside films by emerging directors whose fresh and innovative approaches make a strong impression. It also includes titles that have received significant recognition and premiered at prestigious festivals such as Rotterdam, Berlinale, Locarno, FID Marseille and Visions du Réel, with all the films being presented in Romania for the first time at BIEFF.16.
The first program of the International Short Film Competition, “A Chorus of Vanishing Voices”, brings together five films that listen to the world around us as a polyphonic territory composed of human, animal and mineral voices, reaching us through intergenerational memories and ancestral songs. From one film to the next, the surrounding world ceases to be mere scenery and assumes the role of a storyteller, while celebrating unusual ways of being and inhabiting a world marked by the relentless exploitation of natural resources in the name of progress.
From the politics of movement and the experience of crossing the sea to the relationship between colonialism, tourism and cinema, “Grand Detour” proposes a critical reconsideration of the maps, and of the places and stories that define them. The five films in the program explore legends and personal and collective testimonies, as well as the ways in which territories are transformed through looking and representation, in an attempt to recover forms of knowledge that have been lost, buried or hidden in plain sight.
Starting from the idea of the “end of history,” the program “History.Final.Final” brings fragments of a past that refuses to remain buried back to the surface, questioning the very possibility of imagining a future detached from what came before. From ancient imaginaries of power and the legacy of fascism to the remnants of political internationalism, deindustrialization and the Soviet dream of conquering outer space, the six films gathered here approach history not as a succession of completed chapters, but as a force that continues to shape the present and narrow the horizon of what might come next.
The films in “Conspiracies of Theory” play with appearances, speculation and our need to find explanations, questioning the boundary between truth and fiction. UFOs, destiny, legends, reincarnation, history and artificial intelligence become starting points for five narratives that overturn the rules of knowledge and interpretation. Centered on female characters who reject traditional forms of authority, the fourth program of the International Competition also explores the relationship between theory, objectification and power. In an age of declining credibility, “Conspiracies of Theory” proposes, with humor and lucidity, a temporary suspension of disbelief.
The films gathered in “For Lack of Better Words” treat language as a cinematic material that can be fragmented, reassembled and recontextualized, from the coexistence of different languages and forms of speech to the use of fragments of dialogue taken from other films. Moving between archive, documentary and fiction, the selection examines the ways in which words and images can change meaning when removed from their original contexts.
Last but not least, “An Image Looking Back at Us” investigates the relationship between the viewer and the image, and the possibility that the latter might refuse the passive position imposed upon it by the act of looking. The four films question the conventional mechanisms of identification between spectator, character and filmmaker, while exploring the ways in which images can themselves become spaces of confrontation and contestation, concluding with a glimpse toward the utopian possibilities of the digital image.
The films screened in the BIEFF.16 National Competition compete for two awards: the BIEFF Award for Best Romanian Film, valued at €1,000 and offered with the support of Dacin Sara, and the Award for Best Visual Concept, valued at €2,000 in post-production services and offered by LUNO CGS. The winner will be selected by a jury composed of Öykü Sofuoğlu, film critic, journalist and co-editor of Emitaï and Outskirts Film Magazine, Greg de Cuir Jr, co-founder and artistic director of the Kinopravda Institute in Belgrade, who has collaborated with the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and Hauser & Wirth among others, and Andrei Tănăsescu, a member of the Venice Days / Giornate degli Autori selection committee and a film curator known for his collaborations with TIFF Toronto, Berlinale, BIEFF, American Independent Film Festival and Les Films de Cannes à Bucarest.
The films selected for the BIEFF.16 International Short Film Competition compete for four awards: the BIEFF Award for Best Short Film, offered with the support of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund, the Award for Best Filmmaker, offered with the support of the Romanian Filmmakers Union, the Award for Best Visual Concept, offered once again with the support of the Administration of the National Cultural Fund, and the Award for Best Sound Concept, offered by Luno DSL. The first three awards are worth €1,000 each, while the latter is worth €5,000 in audio post-production services. The winner will be selected by a jury composed of Anne Gaschütz, director of Filmfest Dresden and a member of the Pardi di Domani selection committee at the Locarno Film Festival, Libertad Gills, filmmaker, writer and researcher whose practice focuses on experimental documentary, archival film and videographic criticism, and Cecilia Ermini, film critic and curator who has collaborated over the years with Cinéma du Réel, Pesaro Film Festival, Archivio Aperto, Chute Film Coop and Cinema Godard at Fondazione Prada.
The full film list:
BIEFF.16 National Short Film Competition:
„Uprooting” (d. Patri Preda, Alina Brăcaci)
„Three Bedtime Stories” (d. Andreea Chiper)
„The Other Spring” (d. Monica Maria Moraru)
„The Sugar Tower” (d. Hedda Bednarszky)
„In My Dreams, Or In Ours” (d. Alma Buhagiar)
„Cherry Master” (d. Cosmin Nicolae)
„This gap is (immeasurable)” (d. Maria Mitulescu)
„Once All the Rocks Were Alive” (r. Nona Inescu)
„A Thousand Things” (d. Sebastian Mihăilescu)
„Ornament is Crime ” (d. Mona Vătămanu, Florin Tudor)
BIEFF.16 International Short Film Competition:
„Extinctions of Blue” (d. Basile Trouillet)
„Pacifico” (d. Daniel Duque)
„Gallinazo” (d. Daniel Jacoby)
„Local Sensations” (d. Tulapop Saenjaroen)
„How to Listen to Fountains” (d. Eva Sajanová)
„Go Ye Afar” (d. Frank Sweeney)
„Visita Guiada” (d. Alba Jaramillo)
„Penkelemes” (d. Onyeka Igwe)
„The Recce” (d. Daniel Mann)
„All that remains is the beauty of these stars” (d. wafa lazhari)
„The Strongest Lightning Strikes Not From Dark Skies” (d. Nate Lavey)
„Forgotten Spaceman” (d. Elham Ehsas)
„Filme Pin” (d. María Rojas Arias, Andrés Jurado)
„Dreams for a Better Past” (d Albert Kuhn)
„Equal Dust” (d. Jani Peltonen)
„With a Kind Regard” (d. Pavel Mozhar)
„The Tragic Movement of the Spheres” (d. Simon Rieth)
„The Weary Hours of Two Lab Assistants” (d. Burak Çevik)
„Eleven faces” (d. Giuseppe Onelia)
„Kontrewers” (d. Zuza Banasińska)
„Oh Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me” (d. Alice dos Reis)
„The God that Destroys” (d. Jyoti Mistry)
„Language Models” (d.. Sidney Mandros, Giancarlo M. Sandoval)
„Manal Issa, 2024” (d. Elisabeth Subrin)
„Language in Exile” (d. Silvia Maglioni & Graeme Thomson)
„A Person of the Forest” (d. Miranda Penell)
„This Suffocating Now ” (d. Vika Kirchenbauer)
„Plan Contraplan” (d. Radu Jude, Adrian Cioflâncă)
„like moths to light” (d. Gala Hernández López)
More details about the titles can be found on the BIEFF website, here.
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