2027Alternativa Film Festival: Organisers call for submissions

Alternativa Film Festival, a global film initiative founded by inDrive, has opened submissions for its 2027 edition, which will be held in Africa for the first time.

The festival announced the opening of entries on Thursday at the MIP Africa event, inviting filmmakers from Africa, Asia and Latin America to submit feature films for its fourth edition.

Short film submissions, however, are exclusively open to African filmmakers, reflecting the festival’s focus on the continent for its 2027 edition.

All submitted films must have been completed after 1 January 2026. The call for entries closes on 1 March 2027, and submissions are available free of charge through the festival’s official website.

Alternativa Film Festival is offering $120,000 in prize money across seven award categories. Three awards, the $20,000 Focus Award and two $10,000 Short Film Awards, are reserved for African filmmakers, who are also eligible for the remaining categories.

Directors of films selected for the competition will be invited to attend the festival and its awards ceremony, with their travel and accommodation expenses covered by the organisers.

The 2027 edition is scheduled for late 2027, though the host country, city, and exact dates are yet to be announced.

Expanding opportunities for African filmmakers

According to the organisers, the festival aims to amplify impact-driven cinema from the Global South. This region accounts for roughly five of every six people globally but remains under-represented in films and international cinema platforms.

Speaking on the expansion to Africa, Liza Surganova, Head of Alternativa, said the festival hoped to build on its previous editions while creating more opportunities for filmmakers across the continent.

“With each edition, the Alternativa Film Festival grows. Not only in reach and scale, but also in the connections it creates and the opportunities it opens up for filmmakers.

“As we prepare to bring the festival to Africa for the first time, we want to build on everything we’ve achieved so far, making this edition our biggest and boldest yet while introducing new initiatives for our community,” she said.

Ms Surganova added that Africa’s cultural diversity and cinematic perspectives would contribute to the festival’s next chapter.

The programme will feature public screenings, discussions and other activities aimed at encouraging conversations around the social issues explored in the selected films.

It will also include Industry Days, a professional programme designed to connect filmmakers, producers, industry experts and social impact leaders from across the Global South.

Over 1000 submissions in 2026

Alternativa Film Festival is a nomadic event that moves to a different region each edition.

It began in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in 2023, moved to Yogyakarta, Indonesia, in 2024, and held its third edition in Medellín, Colombia, in 2026.

The Medellín edition received 1,831 film submissions from 55 countries, making it the festival’s largest edition so far. It attracted 11,000 attendees, hosted 107 international guests and brought together more than 60 partners.

The festival’s expansion into distribution is another part of its effort to improve access to international audiences for filmmakers from the Global South.

Alternativa

Alternativa Distribution, launched earlier in 2026, operates a non-profit distribution model that provides upfront minimum guarantees for non-theatrical rights, funds subtitling and dubbing, and shares revenue with filmmakers after recovering direct distribution costs.

Its catalogue includes Nepal’s Elephants in the Fog, which received the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival; Afghanistan’s No Good Men, the opening film at the 2026 Berlin International Film Festival; Malaysia’s Lost Land, winner of the Special Jury Prize in the Orizzonti section at the 2025 Venice Film Festival; and Tunisia’s Four Daughters, a 2024 Academy Awards nominee.

Films selected for the 2027 festival may also be considered for inclusion in the distribution catalogue.

Arsen Tomsky, founder and chief executive officer of inDrive, said the initiative was established to help filmmakers from under-represented regions reach international audiences.

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“Exceptional filmmaking can come from anywhere, but access to international audiences is still hindered by a deeply unequal system,” he said. “Alternativa Distribution was created to challenge that imbalance.”

Elise Shick, a Malaysian producer of Lost Land, which won the Nativa Award at the 2026 edition, also described the festival as a platform for building international collaborations.

“We’ve built a family here at the festival,” she said, adding that participants had already developed a co-production project involving nine countries, which they hoped would premiere at the next edition in Africa.

Alternativa Film Festival accepts fiction, documentary, animation and hybrid films across all genres.

Filmmakers can find the full eligibility criteria, list of participating countries and submission requirements on the festival’s official website.