Balkans Beyond Borders Short Film Festival (BBB-SFF)

BBB-SFF travels yearly in a different EU or candidate country, inviting emerging young film-makers to respond in an artistic way to the BBB’s overarching working theme. In this way it creates a network that shares practices, experiences and mechanisms aiming to enhance the contribution and knowledge on European films and cinematographic heritage. It is addressed to local citizens without distinction of age, language, nationality or race, young artists and film-school students and stakeholders from the fields of culture and arts. Thus, it wishes to make arts and culture accessible to diverse audiences, contribute to intercultural dialogue and trigger the debate over the European common values, history, culture & identity.

The initiative acknowledges the potential of arts in achieving all that politics are failing to. Targeting beyond mainstream artistic approaches, the films feature life-aspects of marginalized, oppressed or invisible individuals. The festival embodies tangible intercultural dialogue, enabling artists from different countries to raise awareness on socio-political elements of their societies. It mainly present films from SEE, yet offering new perspectives from the cinematographic heritage beyond the region and internationally. The films are placed in the wider discourse on identity and values conceptually espoused by the EU thus widening & deepening their potential impact. Involving artistic works of EU states along with candidate ones, rarely seen as equal contributors to the European heritage, has a double advancement: enables appreciation of the Balkan art scene’s value & integration in the European cultural circuit; fosters cultural exchange based on respect, empathy and equality.