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    • New Talents Open Call
      Eastern Neighbours Film Festival (ENFF) began in The Netherlands in 2008 with the idea to offer Dutch and international audiences a unique glimpse into the cinema of their neighbors from Eastern and Southern Europe. This annual event presents the most recent, exciting, and thought‐provoking films, from countries with small, but often powerful film industries, that… Read more: New Talents Open Call
    • ENFF 2023 On Demand!
      Unable To attend the festival in person? No problem! From November 27th to December 3rd, we’re thrilled to bring you a curated selection of this year’s films available for online viewing! Catch our captivating Opening Film Ivan’s Land, or the touching Closing Film Seventh Heaven. Or explore a collection of shorts from the New Talents Competition! Follow along… Read more: ENFF 2023 On Demand!
    • What’s up in Slovak Cinema? A conversation with Monika Lostakova
      We talked with Monika Lošťáková about contemporary Slovak cinema.
    • ENFF and the Eastern European Film Festival Network!
      The Eastern European Film Festival Network brings together five film festivals dedicated to promoting and showcasing Eastern European cinema, alongside one partner organisation.
    • Masterclasses
      Through these masterclasses we approach two memory in film from different angles: memories from a personal or collective recollection through archive material.
    • Work in Progress
      In Work in Progress, emerging filmmakers and artists will present their works in development to the audience and engage in discussions with Dutch experts.
    • Festival Timetable Available!
    • Check out the catalogue for our 2023 edition!
    • Music at ENFF
      Every year, ENFF brings special musical guests who bring beauty to the program and further represent the rich cultures of their countries to a Dutch audience.
    • Film Marathon
      Join us for the Film Marathon, a new concept in which we merge two components, Short Films, Big Stories, and New Talents Competition into a whole-day screening of short films!

Short Films, Big Stories

In this program, we bring you as many as 12 films that were (co)produced in nine countries! You can find documentaries that will disarm you with their sharpness, and make you think about existence, but also about the influence of political regimes on people’s lives. There are also several short feature films in which protagonists try to fight for their rights, change inefficient systems or analyze their own past.

3 DIALOGUES ABOUT THE FUTURE by Alina Manolache brings a discussion of three robots about life and what it means to be human. A PIGEON’S SONG by Eneos Çarka deals with the director’s family past during one of Europe’s harshest communist regimes. BABAJANJA by Ante Zlatko Stolica is an oneiric essay with the suspense of a horror awarded at Sarajevo Film Festival and MakeDOX. BOSNIAN BROADWAY by Jasmina Besirevic gives an insight into the lives of young people and their chances for success through the story of 16 actors from ex-YU who were cast in a Broadway musical. DISPLACED by Samir Karahoda won the prestigious Sundance Festival. Based on a true story of a post-war Kosovo ping pong club and two enthusiasts struggling to maintain it. RETREAT by Anabela Angelovska discusses the complicated ratio between the economic benefits and the trauma of war that US military base workers from North Macedonia back home. 

SIGURIMI by Luigjina Shkupa talks about hundreds of thousands of bunkers marking Albania’s landscape as a symbol of the strange co-existence of the past and the present times. SNOW WHITE is a directorial debut by the famous Croatian actress Lana Baric about a woman who struggles with her painful past. It won the award for the best Croatian short film at Motovun Film Festival 2022. SOFT CREATURES by Ivana Skrabalo reveals how a hypersensitive teaching assistant of a boy with learning disabilities is forced to cope with a rigid school system. SPECIAL TRAINS by Krsto Papic is a powerful, authentic, and still relevant Croatian classic from 1972 about the bitter departure of Yugoslavian Gastarbeiters to Germany. Olmo Omerzu’s THE LAST DAY OF PATRIARCHY presents a challenging dilemma. Would a young, pregnant woman honor the last wish of her partner’s dying grandfather? WE, … COMPOSITION by Visar Jusufi is a touching, personal story about the director’s life as an immigrant in Germany, which won the prestigious Heart of Sarajevo award for the best short documentary film at the Sarajevo Film Festival 2022.