Blog: Film festivals

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