BEAST IFF returns to Porto from 3 to 7 June

agenda

DATE

20 May 2026

AUTHOR

Umbigo

BEAST IFF returns to Porto from 3 to 7 June

AUTHOR

Umbigo

Under the motto "Nothing Left to Lose," BEAST - International Film Festival of Central and Eastern Europe returns to Porto from 3 to 7 June, with a program conceived around the theme of HOME and free accreditation for all students and cultural professionals.

In a context marked by migration, war, political tension, and increasing disconnection, the 9th edition of the BEAST festival proposes to consider the home as a fragile space, shaped by memory, survival, and displacement. In addition to the festival's usual official competition, there are numerous special sessions (inside and outside the cinema) and curatorial programs that explore multiple perspectives on memory, territory, displacement, community, and belonging.

In 2026, the official BEAST 2026 competition brings together 27 short films from different regions of Central and Eastern Europe, distributed across the festival's four competitive categories: EAST WAVE (fiction), EAST DOC (documentary), EXPERIMENTAL EAST (experimental), and ANIMA EAST (animation). Amidst uncertain futures, family archives, fragile ecosystems, suspended childhoods, and mutating urban spaces, the selected films cross different cinematic languages and reveal a strong presence of new voices in contemporary cinema from the region.

Alongside the official competition, BEAST maintains its practice of collaborations. This year, the festival presents the FESTIVAL VISIT section, with the Zubroffka International Short Film Festival as the guest festival. The section features two distinct programs: EASTWARD WINDOW, which brings together some of the most relevant independent films from post-socialist countries, establishing cultural and artistic bridges between East and West, and FILM PODLASIE ATTACK PORTO, which proposes an informal encounter between cinema, gastronomy, and regional identity, inspired by the Polish region of Podlasie. The festival continues the AMARO KINO – ROMANI SHORT FILMS section, developed in collaboration with the European Roma Institute for Arts and Culture (ERIAC), which presents a selection of films centered on stories from the contemporary Roma community.

Also noteworthy is the strengthening of the SCHOOL VISIT section, dedicated to European film schools, which features a session of short films from the last 10 years by FAMU, from the Czech Republic, an iconic faculty in the region that celebrates its 80th anniversary this year. Also in this section, the festival presents two film sessions from the DFFB - Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin: a session of short films by directors Borbála Nagy, Ewelina Rosinska and Xandra Popescu; and a session of the feature-length documentary Who, if not us?, by Nicole Medvecka, which portrays the lives of young people (DJs and artists) living in Ukraine in a context of war. Also from Ukraine, as part of the HOW TO CARE FOR COSMOS section, the festival reinforces its collaboration with SUNNY BUNNY, the queer film festival in Kyiv, presenting five films with themes ranging from love in times of war to queer resistance and expression.

The BEAST 2026 program also includes a series of special sessions dedicated to experimental cinema, animation, and audiovisual archives. A highlight is the MEETING AT THE KINO KLUB program, developed in collaboration with the Academic Film Center, which pays homage to the tradition of Kino Klubs in the former Socialist Yugoslavia and the role of the Academic Film Center in Belgrade as a space for cinematic experimentation since 1958. The program brings together works by filmmakers from different generations, traversing filmed diaries, personal archives, and audiovisual essays. Also noteworthy is Grounds for Speculation, a program of experimental films by Czech artist Oskar Helcel, curated by Pavla Rouskova. This program, which will be presented at the Casa do Comum of the University of Porto's Rectorate, brings together three short films that reflect on the privatization of public space, gentrification, and late capitalism in the contemporary city, establishing parallels between the urban transformations of Prague and Porto. Following the screening, there will be a conversation with Habitação Hoje, a collective dedicated to the current housing situation in Porto and Portugal, creating a space for reflection and debate based on the issues raised by the films.

The parallel programming of BEAST 2026 also extends beyond cinema, bringing together various initiatives with independent artistic communities. In collaboration with Rádio Quântica and several community radio stations from Central and Eastern Europe — including IDA Radio, Tīrkultūra, Mutant Radio, Radio Vilnius, Lahmacun Radio, Cashmere Radio, Black Rhino and Radio Kapital — the festival will host special broadcasts on June 6th and 7th.

BEAST 2026 takes place in various venues in the city of Porto, including Batalha – Centro de Cinema, Cinema Passos Manuel, Cinema Trindade, Casa Comum, Central Eléctrica, Sigilo and Rádio Quântica. The full program can be found on the festival's website.

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