Blog: Film festivals

The Cittador International Film Festival in Vienna is an annual event that presents international, European and Austrian independent feature-length film and short films. Our festival is addressed to all filmmaker who love inspirational, high quality, engaging, original, and imaginative films.

Our Film Festival was created with the goal of showcasing emerging film talent, inspiring and entertaining audiences, as well as motivating filmmakers and inspiring film lovers. We aim to discover and highlight current cinematic themes and endeavors worldwide in film.
Therefore, we show films as a palette from all film genres, so that a comprehensive cinematic picture can be created for the film audience.

Cittador International Film Festival considers feature-length up to 120 and short films up to 30 minutes running time.

The live cinema screenings of the winning films with a live award ceremony will take place at the Lugner Kino in Vienna, Austria.

SCREENINGS
The screening will take place from December 14 to 21, 2025, either as a live screening in the cinema or as an online screening. This means that all best-of awarded short films will be shown in the cinema and all best-of feature-length films will be shown online. The full schedule will be published on the CIFF website.

After the screenings in the cinema, filmmakers, crew, cast members, and film enthusiasts in attendance will be invited to participate in video interviews. These videos will be featured on our website under “Cittador’s Talks” and shared on social media. Please note that the festival does not cover travel and accommodation costs for attending the screening.

LIVE AWARD CEREMONY
The award ceremony will take place live at the Lugner Cinema on December 14, 2025. During the ceremony, the award-winning films will be presented, filmmakers will be invited to make a statement, and the official certificates will be handed out.

Filmmakers are requested to confirm their attendance at the award ceremony via email after the jury’s decision to ensure they are included in the program. Please note that travel and accommodation costs for attending the screening will not be covered by the festival.

Those filmmakers who cannot be present will be asked to send a video message (max. 2 minutes) to be shown during the ceremony.

The first part of the screening will follow immediately after the awards ceremony. As the festival also serves as a networking opportunity for industry professionals, a meet-and-greet will take place after the screening. During the meet-and-greet, filmmakers, team members, and film enthusiasts will be interviewed on video. These videos will be published on the CIFF website under the “Cittador’s Talks” series and shared on social media.

Filmmakers will receive further details about the awards ceremony via email, so we kindly ask you to ensure your contact details remain up to date.