MANIFESTO
The city has always inspired us. It has been at the heart of our projects. We wanted to celebrate it, to pay it an open tribute through experimental cinema by questioning its “urbanity”: its places, whether private or public, the people who build it, inhabit it or simply pass through it, what survives it and what transforms it. A poetics of encounters between different spaces and temporalities that evolve in a perpetual double movement, between construction and reconstruction.
Through the immensity of the networks it (de)constructs, urbanity has been part of the cinematographic landscape since the advent of the moving image. While some constantly attempt to capture its fiery breath, others invite it to slow down in a freeze-frame ecology. Both devouring and dreamlike, fantasized and alarming, urbanity is a place of new creative promises, which GRAIN URBAIN film festival offers to explore.
Short film is a field of experimentation that allows for formal, limitless expression of cinematic language: how can we describe the transcendent relationship between cities and the filmic object? How can we capture the energy and historical force that emanate from a building, from a street name, from the memory of a monument? How does a city unite as much as it alienates, rise as much as it shatters, reveal its labyrinthine structures as much as it surveils?
After its first edition in March 2025, GRAIN URBAIN film festival is back for a second open call focusing on both poetic and critical perspectives at what seemingly appears as the most fascinating feature about urbanity: its ability to survive those who left it.
OPEN CALL
GRAIN URBAIN festival focuses on experimental cinema.
The selection welcomes both films produced by a production company and self-produced films in their final stages of production.
Until Septembre 1st, registration fees are 10 euros (standard) and 5 euros (student). For more information on the submission process, visit our registration page.
Hereby the list of accepted genres:
• FICTION
• CREATIVE DOCUMENTARY
• DOCU-FICTION
• VIDEO ESSAY / VIDEO ART
• MUSICAL
• ANIMATION
AWARD
At the end of the evening, the members of the jury, formed by personalities with a professional background in both cinema and urban fields, will select 2 films from the official competition to be awarded.
For the occasion, winning directors will each receive a trophy created by designer Julien Roos and produced by GRAIN URBAIN and ÉQUIPE CRÉATIVE teams. A third category, the Audience Prize, will reward a film from the official selection through a QR code vote.
GRAND PRIX
JURY PRIZE
AUDIENCE PRIZE
PARTNERS
