Provinziale – Filmfest Eberswalde

Provinziale – Filmfest Eberswalde

Also known as: Filmfest Eberswalde
📝 Sign up as a festival representative to manage this page!

Provinziale – Filmfest Eberswalde is an international festival in Eberswalde, Brandenburg, devoted to films about home, landscape, town and countryside – the province in the broadest sense. Its selection looks for work on how people relate to place: spatial reference, the use of resources, coming, going, staying and shaping, with landscape, region or locality appearing as a participant in human life.

The festival is organised by SEHquenz e.V. für kommunale Filmarbeit, an Eberswalde association founded in 2003. A programme advisory board views around 550–600 submissions from some 60 countries and selects four international competitions: short documentary, short fiction, animation and long documentary, the last compiled mainly from invited films. In each competition the audience awards two prizes, Die Rose and Die Distel, while the jury prize Der Stachel goes to a film engaging with sustainability. Screenings are accompanied by music and filmmaker talks. The 2026 edition takes place on 10–17 October at Haus Schwärzetal.

Country

Germany

Categories

Animation, Documentary, Short

Awards and prizes

Each of the four competitions has two audience prizes: Die Rose, for the film with the strongest emotional impact, and Die Distel, for the film most relevant to the festival's theme of people and their surroundings. They carry EUR 1,000 each in the short documentary, short feature and animation competitions and EUR 2,000 each in the long documentary competition. Der Stachel, the festival's only jury prize (EUR 2,000), is awarded across all four competitions to the film that engages most convincingly with sustainability; the selection team nominates four to eight films for it.

Festival rules

Submission is free of charge via the online form; for the 2026 edition the call ran from 15 February to 15 May 2026. Open competitions: Short Documentary (up to 45 min), Short Feature Film (up to 30 min), Animated Film (up to 30 min). The fourth competition, Long Documentary (over 45 min), is compiled from invited films; unsolicited applications are possible only with an exposé sent by e-mail to doc.submission@provinziale.de by 15 April. Films must be no older than two years (production years 2024–2026 for the 2026 edition). Films should respond to the festival's theme: spatial reference, resource management, coming, going, staying and shaping. Viewing files: mp4, max. 1 GB, in English or German or with English or German subtitles. Screening copies must be subtitled in German or English. The festival pays no screening or delivery fees for competition films; shipping costs are borne by the sender. Selection is made by the selection committee, which may assign films to programme categories. The regulations exist in German and English; the German version is authoritative.

Contacts

✏️ Edit this page!