2026 Official Selection
International Short Film Competition Programme Announcement
The Encounters Film Festival 2026 competition programme brings together 142 exceptional films from fresh voices and celebrated filmmakers around the world. The 31st edition showcases the very best in contemporary short film, spanning live action, animation and documentary across the Brief Encounters, Animated Encounters and Documentary Grand Prix competitions, the Children's Jury programmes and the DepicT! competition for films under 90 seconds.
71 Premieres and Films from 39 Countries
This year's selection features 71 premieres, including 17 world premieres, 7 international premieres and 47 UK premieres, with new work drawn from 39 countries, from Afghanistan and Cambodia to Mexico, Palestine, Taiwan and Ukraine. Half the competition has never been seen in the UK before, so audiences in Bristol will be among the very first anywhere to discover the next wave of cinematic talent.
Programme highlights include the UK premiere of Paper Plane, the directorial debut of four-time Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan, alongside new films from Oscar winner Aneil Karia (Vote Gavin Lyle), Oscar nominees Joshua Oppenheimer (The Revolution Against Death, UK premiere), Don Hertzfeldt (Paper Trail), Bill Morrison (Sawyer Avenue, Sunday Afternoon, UK premiere) and Jérémy Comte (Brute, UK premiere), plus Jamie Hewlett and Max Taylor’s Gorillaz film The Mountain, The Moon Cave & The Sad God.
Animation lovers can look forward to new work from Anna Mantzaris (PLEASE), Theodore Ushev (Life with an idiot), Anna Ginsburg (HAG), Emma Calder and Coco Cripps (House of Love) and Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski (The Girl Who Cried Pearls), while the documentary competition includes Maryam Tafakory’s Daria’s Night Flowers and Elham Ehsas’ Forgotten Spaceman. Viral filmmaking phenomenon Wesley Wang brings the international festival premiere of Violet and Marlowe Rob a Bank.
Bristol and the South West are strongly represented, including the world premiere of Paul Holbrook’s Tor Lewa, Myles Kamwendo’s Why You Shouldn’t Date In Bristol and Rob Hifle’s _RENO _(European premiere).
The 2026 Official Selection celebrates the vitality of British filmmaking alongside cinema’s universal language, with premieres arriving from every corner of the globe.