Fringe Flicks is PVTV’s underground short film night in Liverpool, built for filmmakers and audiences who like cinema with edges: strange, playful, unsettling, excessive, formally adventurous or impossible to categorise.
For Season 5, we’re looking for short films that don’t quite behave: surreal comedies, strange dramas, experimental videos, animated nightmares, political satire, odd little micro-shorts, polished provocations, awkward miracles and anything else that feels too weird, funny, furious or alive to sit comfortably in the mainstream.
Selected films will screen across three Fringe Flicks events in Liverpool in 2027, with each programme curated as a live, communal cinema night rather than a generic festival block. We care less about industry polish than whether the film has a distinctive voice, image, rhythm, atmosphere, idea or point of view.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
We welcome short films, experimental videos, animations, artist moving image, hybrid work and anything that sits awkwardly between categories.
We’re especially interested in:
- experimental cinema
- surreal, absurdist, anarchic, and dreamlike shorts
- political and social satire, especially work that punches up
- films with cult energy
- formally inventive filmmaking, whether polished, rough, digital, analogue, animated or live action
- films that challenge norms, twist expectations or refuse to behave properly
- distinctive micro-shorts with a strong idea, image, joke, rhythm or atmosphere
Your film does not need to look a particular way. It can be polished, rough, funny, angry, quiet, maximalist, tiny, beautiful, grotesque or completely wrong. We’re looking for work with something distinctive about it: a strange idea, a sharp joke, a memorable image, an unusual structure, a strong atmosphere, a specific voice, or just that hard-to-define quality that makes a film stick in your head.
WHY SUBMIT TO FRINGE FLICKS?
Fringe Flicks champions short films that don’t fit neatly into the mainstream festival mould. We screen to real, engaged audiences in Liverpool, in a social, low-pressure setting designed for people who actually want to encounter strange cinema together.
Each event is carefully curated rather than treated as a random block of shorts. We think about rhythm, tone, atmosphere and how films speak to each other across the night. The screenings are friendly, informal and audience-facing, with space for conversation, drinks, voting and creative exchange.
We’re interested in filmmakers working in their own way, whether that means polished production, DIY methods, experimental process, strange comedy, animation, video art, genre mutation or something harder to name. Fringe Flicks is a home for cinema that bites, glitches, mutates, provokes, confuses, amuses or delights.
WHO CAN SUBMIT?
We welcome submissions from filmmakers anywhere in the world, regardless of background, training, budget or career stage.
Most of all, we’re looking for imaginative work told in distinctive ways. Tell the stories you want to tell, in the way only you can.
For Season 5, we also offer free submission routes for:
- filmmakers based in Merseyside
- under-represented filmmakers based in North West England or North Wales
These free routes are intended to help reduce barriers for filmmakers who may not have easy access to festival submission budgets, industry networks or formal film opportunities. Our general fees are also kept deliberately low so the callout remains accessible to DIY, emerging, low-budget and self-funded filmmakers.
SCREENING DETAILS
Selected films will screen as part of Fringe Flicks: Season 5, across three live screening events in Liverpool in 2027.
Current planned season dates:
- 12 February 2027
- 21 May 2027
- 8 October 2027
Each event will include a curated short film programme, an interval, refreshments and a relaxed community atmosphere. Our screenings are pay-what-you-can, not-for-profit events, with audience voting and space for people to talk, meet and share thoughts after the films.
Screenings take place at DoES Liverpool.
HOW TO SUBMIT
Submissions are open exclusively through Festhome.
For questions, please email:
peopleversustv@gmail.com
You can also find more information about Fringe Flicks here:
https://www.peopleversus.tv/fringe-flicks
