BUT Film Festival (19)

Festival start: 26 August 2026      Festival end: 30 August 2026

Fans of bizarre, experimental or otherwise divergent movies are served every year at the international festival for B-movies, Underground and Trash films, known as the BUT Film Festival (BUTFF for short), in Breda (the Netherlands). Five days of out-of-the-ordinary films, shorts, docs, art, performances, poetry, music, food, beer and other extravaganza. Infamously known as the enfant terrible of the Dutch film festival landscape, BUTFF offers an alternative place where (both underground and established) filmmakers, distributors and the audience meet each other to celebrate the BUT-genre. Its film program contains every year roughly around 50 feature and 50 short films, mainly focussing on the weird and the wicked of low-budget, independent and genre cinema. Usually about 70% of the program consists of new films, the rest is retrospective. For each festival edition, three films are nominated for the BUTtest feature award and four or five shorts for the BUTtest short award. The winners are decided by a carefully selected external jury every year.

BUTFF has hosted many internationally renowned guests over the years including; John Waters, Lloyd Kaufman, Enzo G. Castellari, Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson, Rodrigo Aragão, Barak Epstein, Nick Zedd, Remy Couture, Bruce LaBruce, Debbie Rochon, Richard Stanley, Marian Dora, Fred Vogel, Jörg Buttgereit, J.T. Petty, Andrew van den Houten, Wenzel Storch, Scott Schirmer, Christian Veil, Adam Wingard, Javi Camino, Harry Kümel, Norbert Pfaffenbichler, Robert ‘Bronzi’ Kovacs, Jim Groom, Laurence R. Harvey, and many others…

BUTFF is a non-profit festival, run by a foundation (IDFX) and volunteers.

6,66 euros is charged for submitting feature films and 1 euro for short films.

BUTtest Feature Award [awarded by the jury]

BUTtest Short Award [awarded by the jury]

Bloody Beginner Award [awarded by veteran organisers of the festival; celebrating the upcoming talent]

Honorary Award [formerly known as the ‘Super Awesome Award’, ‘Groundbreaker Award’, the ‘Lifetime Achievement Award’ and ‘BUTtiful Acting Award’; this is our prize to honour the cinematographic achievements of our main guest(s)]

BEFORE YOU SUBMIT, PLEASE READ THE DESCRIPTION OR CHECK THE WEBSITE: butff.nl

• DO NOT SUBMIT FILMS THAT DO NOT FIT OUR CATEGORIES!
• DO NOT SUMBIT VIDEOCLIPS, SCRIPTS OR TRAILERS ONLY!
• ONLY SUBMIT ENGLISH SPOKEN AND/OR ENGLISH SUBTITLED!

Our program team will decide the selection for the film festival. Submissions might also be screened on other occasions during BUT-on-tour events throughout the year.