About the festival

BEACH FILM FESTIVAL (BFF) promotes and celebrates European cinema's latest achievements. The festival is an interdisciplinary event focused on the development and presentation of the newest European films. The program is intended for people of all ages, with special emphasis on a younger intellectual audience, interested in film or engaged with contemporary European culture. The idea is to use the summer period and the beach as a social phenomenon for exchanging experiences and discussions in a more relaxed way, without the urban pressures or any time-space inhibitors.

The BFF has a tripartite structure, 1) Film, 2) Educational and 3) Multimedia sections. During the four festival days, more than 30 films will be screened within the tree thematic programs, a) Official Selection (Feature films, Short films and a Documentary Selection of Films on Human Rights), b) Beach Program (Gala proections) and c) Youth Program. The Official Selection and the Youth Program will take place in the Cultural Centre in Ohrid, while the Beach Program is planned to be performed in the external environment of the remarkable Orevče Beach on the Ohrid Lake. The three competitive programs will be selected by local and international selectors, with the “Authorship Innovation,” “Idea and Approach,” “Bridges and Connections – Europe in the Focus,” and “Human Rights in Action” as the four major criteria for both the selection and the final Festival’s awards. The educational section is projected to reflect the thematic structure of the BFF. Herein, this section is consisted of two main events. The first one is to be the two-days thematic conference on the “Film and the Education,” which will bring together a group of regional and international experts and practitioners. The conference, its thematic panels and lectures, as well as the final interactive publication, are projected to contribute towards developing a viable platform for disseminating the major BFF values – creativity, inclusivity and the promotion of human rights, and thus, to opt for a broader, cross-institutional implementation of the abovementioned set of values. The second one is a series of workshops on “Human Rights in cinema,” “New Media,” and “Engaged Photography” held by the leading regional experts. Both the conference and the workshops series will be open to public and the participation will be free of charge. Finally, the Multimedia section will consist of musical happenings, memory tour in the city of Ohrid, formal and informal discussions after the movie screenings. The BFF will take place in Ohrid, while the awarded movies, as well as certain talks, workshops and panel sessions, are projected to travel to the borderland cities in Macedonia in the aftermath of the Festival. The team would like to profit from Ohrid as the main touristic location in Macedonia and aims at filling the gap of the absence of cultural events in the city during the summer season. The publication and the happenings in the other cities are projected to occur between September and October 2018.

Where

Beach "Slavija", Ohrid

When

Wednesday - Sunday
20-24 July