Berlin Feminist Film Week (7)

Festival start: 05 March 2020      Festival end: 11 March 2020

The Berlin Feminist Film Week is a film festival with focus on feminist films and discourse, aiming to not only tackle the quantitative issue of representation and diversity but also the misrepresentation and qualitative issue of diversity in mainstream cinema. The Berlin Feminist Film Week is Germany's biggest feminist film festival: we welcome submissions from all women, queer, trans and LGBTQI* filmmakers out there from any country in the world.

As of now, the patriarchy controls storytelling and most films are made from a white cis-male perspective. Women, PoC and queer filmmakers are underrepresented in front as well as behind the camera and we think that everyone deserves to be represented and truly represented in the stories the world gets to see. Not only at big festivals but in cinemas, there is a true lack of diversity and though our festival is small, we hope that we can inspire others to change this.

We seek to increase visibility for all femtastic filmmakers out there and highlight films with interesting, complex female characters and films which challenge existing gender norms. Our focus is mainly on film made by non-cis-gendered men, as they already have enough ground in the film industry. In the majority of all movies currently shown in cinemas around the world, women are often founding in supporting roles, people of color as well LGBTQ*, queer and non-gender-conforming characters get even less screen time. Not to mention characters combining these. We want to put forward female and minority filmmakers, films featuring women *, films in which women are portrayed as active rather than passive, in which women play the leading role and movies in which women are as interesting and diverse as in real life.

Our ambition is to show a varied and diverse program with films from multiple genres from different parts of the world and explore feminism via cinematic experiences. We aim for this festival to be accessible and inclusive for everyone. Feminism take many shapes and forms, even a not explicitly feminist film plot can be changing the gender norms. But feminism can also be very subjective, what might be empowering for us might not be so for you. Therefore we try to incorporate discussions and dialogues around our films and welcome an interactive dialogue with our guests.

We welcome everyone who considers themselves a feminist filmmaker to submit film to the Berlin Feminist Film Week, however please respect our mission as state above as our aim is to provide space to female, non-binary, queer and trans filmmakers. The 7th edition of the Berlin Feminist Film Week will take place in March 2020. Keep an eye out for upcoming programs, find us on Facebook or subscribe to our newsletter to keep up to date.

Please include the following in your submission:
- Film file / Link with English subtitles (unless the film is in English)
- Three stills from film (300 dpi)
- One photo of the filmmaker (300 dpi) and a short biography
- Short and long description of the film
- Trailer if available

Audience Award for best short film

Our terms and conditions apply:

- Films have to have relevance for feminism and the feminist discourse, but does not have to explicitly deal with the topic of feminism and/or gender roles. Any narrative, which moves beyond the cis-male (white) characters or mainstream cinema is relevant to our festival.
- Shorts are any films under 40 min, features anything above 40 min.
- We accept films from any genre and of any length.
- Year of completion does not matter, we accept films from any year as long as relevant to the festival.
- We like Berlin premieres, it is, however, no must.
- Please note our mission statement, we are dedicated to providing a space for filmmakers, who are usually underrepresented in the film industry (women, trans, non-binary, PoC, queer filmmakers) and films made by cis-male filmmakers will only be accepted as an exception.
- The submitter must be entitled to submit the film and the legal rights to screen it.
- Submission does not guarantee acceptance, the team of Berlin Feminist Film Week will select the films for the festival and the submitter will be notified if the film has been accepted. Please note that we do not have the capacity to contact all filmmakers personally. We will send out notifications to selected filmmakers via Festhome and reply to non-selected filmmakers if we have the capacity to do so.
- We have to be notified of any screening fees in the initial submission or else it will be assumed that the film can be screened free of charge. Screening fees might affect acceptance.
- We do not return any material sent to us.
- The submission fee is non-refundable.
- By submitting a film the filmmakers, copyright owners, and distribution rights owners agree to have the film screened if selected for the program. We might also re-screen films for future short film programs curated by the Berlin Feminist Film Week.
- We reserve the right to use the stills and images for our promotional material such as the website, our program or our press releases with no further mention of photo credit.
- For submission, it will be enough to send a link to Vimeo or similar with a password and once the film has been accepted, we will let in which format we will need the screening copy. If the screening format is DCP only, this has to be communicated to us at the time of submission.
- Shipping costs / digital transfer costs have to be paid by the filmmaker.
- Please contact us if your country has sanctions on Paypal, we're happy to help out.
If you have any questions please contact us at submissions@berlinfeministfilmweek.com. Looking forward to your work!