The Ethnofest – Athens International Ethnographic Film Festival is preparing its 16th edition with a renewed vision, significantly strengthening its support for domestic documentary productions.
Focusing on the starting point, the voices of emerging filmmakers, the festival is introducing its first competitive section, Initiations: Student Films in Greece. Furthermore, the festival’s sections are evolving, incorporating elements that have shaped its program so far and new, broader narrative and creative forms within the documentary genre, with the new section Sights For Sore Eyes.
The 16th Ethnofest – Athens Ethnographic Film Festival will take place from November 27 to December 1, 2025.
Founded in 2010, the festival has become one of Europe’s most significant and original documentary film festivals. Each year, through parallel events such as seminars, workshops, masterclasses, Q&As, and exhibitions, Ethnofest maintains a strong presence in Athens’s cultural and social life while contributing to contemporary global discussions on the present and future of documentary filmmaking. Alongside its main program, the festival features special screenings, thematic sections, and tributes. Since 2024, Ethnofest has inaugurated the section Narrating the Fieldwork that hosts in development audiovisual work, while the section of Intangible Cultural Heritage and its subsection “Ethnomusicology and Cinema” remain a festival constant.
Eligible films must have been completed in 2024 or later. Submissions can be made in one of the three open sections:
SIGHTS FOR SORE EYES
In this broader and renewed section, we invite human and socially oriented documentaries from all over the world, from both established and new filmmakers. Films that challenge our perspectives and question our certainties about the lived social realities on the planet. Films that build on, reappropriate and transcend established forms with experimental and visual narratives, constituting representative examples of the multiple forms that creative documentary and ethnographic approaches can offer.
Eligible are the films – feature or short – that have not previously been publicly screened (commercially or at festivals) in Athens.
Submission Fee: 5 EUR
INITIATIONS: INTERNATIONAL STUDENT FILMS
Student and academic documentaries can be innovative, bold, and uncompromising, offering a glimpse into the future. This section showcases a selection of the best documentaries produced as part of educational programs worldwide. We are interested in films with a maximum duration of 30 minutes, created in social science departments (such as visual anthropology and visual sociology), but we also wish to highlight films from film and media studies departments that employ ethnographic methodology.
Eligible are the films with maximum duration of 30 minutes that have not previously been publicly screened (commercially or at festivals) in Athens.
Note: Films longer than 30 minutes, produced as part of doctoral dissertations, can be submitted to the section Sights For Sore Eyes.
Submission Fee: 3 EUR
INITIATIONS: STUDENT FILMS IN GREECE
This section presents the best and most recent student documentaries produced in various film and social science departments in Greece, with a focus on ethnographic approaches and socially oriented documentaries.
With the aim of supporting the voices of the future, the films in the section will be eligible for an award, which includes a cash prize of 500 EUR.
Eligible are the films with a maximum duration of 30 minutes that have not previously been publicly screened (commercially or at festivals) in Athens.
Note: Films longer than 30 minutes, produced as part of doctoral dissertations, can be submitted to the section Sights For Sore Eyes.
Submission Fee: 3 EUR
The deadline for submitting films is June 1st, 2025 (regular deadline). Films are submitted through the Film Free Way.
For any question related to the open call and submitting process please contact us at [email protected].