The 23rd edition of Tirana International Film Festival – Oscar® & European Film Awards qualifying will be held from September 21-27, 2025.

The Best Short Film will be eligible for the 98th Oscars® 2026 as well as the European Film Awards 2025. Student films officially selected at TIFF are eligible to compete for Student Academy® Awards (SAA).
Since 2013, TIFF is also part of the 110 most important festivals in the world, which are followed with special attention online, but also physically by the HFPA – Hollywood Foreign Press Associations.

TIFF’s Daily Program combines 200 film premieres in competition across all categories and genres. This year’s calendar has been also enriched with an exclusive special program:

The Galà Opening Ceremony will be organized on Sunday 21st, 18:00, at the Millenium Cinema.
After the Ceremony, this 23rd edition of TIFF will officially open with the film Father Mother Sister Brother by Jim Jarmusch, which just had its world premiere at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival 2025 awarded with the Golden Lion.

FOCUS
This year’s TIFF FOCUS, spotlights Icelandic director Rúnar Rúnarsson, whose films have quietly left a distinctive imprint on Nordic cinema. He depicts people caught in the delicate tug of grief and untold dramas of daily routines, crafting his cinematic poetics through minimalism and gentle rhythms of time.

Beginning with his seminal short The Last Farm, which tenderly considers the transition between life and death, he progresses to Volcano and Sparrows, each work a subtle dissection of family ties and the fragility they harbour. Echo assembles a constellation of vignettes set against the silence of a midwinter Christmas. Each fragment represents a voice that, in its smallness, assesses the width of a civilisation. Along with them, the program includes the very successful trilogy of short films, the last short film O (Circle) and the last feature film When the Light Breaks, which explore the abyss of a self-destructive human being and the impossibility of grief.

RetrospectTIFF
For the first time, TIFF dedicates a special space to the Video Art category including two programs, which consists in “Obsession”, a solo screening artist’s videos realized between 2006 and 2025 by Fani Zguro.

The quotation “the illegal we do immediately, the unconstitutional takes a little longer”, is the proposal for the other retrospective program “The Anarchists” from the most acclaimed contemporary artists, as Miguel Calderon, Maria Thereza Alves & Jimmie Durham, Jakup
Ferri, Dora Garcia, Manuela Garcia, Johan Grimonprez, Lia Perjovschi, Santiago Sierra, Bert Theis, Shingo Yoshida and Fani Zguro.

TIFF Classics
The world premiere of the acclaimed historical war drama movie Liri a Vdekje (Freedom or Death), 1979, restored in 4K will have its exclusive screening during TIFF at the Millennium Cinema.

The digital restoration of this film was made possible thanks to A Season of Classic Films, an initiative of Association des Cinémathèques Européennes (ACE), with the support of the EU Creative Europe MEDIA Programme. Freedom or Death has been restored from the original
35mm negative elements by AUGUSTUS COLOR (ITALY), with original negative elements scanned at AQSHF studio.

INDUSTRY EVENTS
4th SCREENPLAY ContesTIFF 2025
aims to evaluate from our partner producers and distributors the best and most likely screenplay to be produced by them with the greatest chances of successful distribution in the most important international short film festivals.
Our partners have nominated 10 scripts for Pitching and at the Awards Ceremony, September 27, 2025, they will reward the winning scripts with the Distribution Award and the possibility of signing a production or distribution contract with the winners.

Talking Shorts – panel discussion
TIFF 2025 introduces, for the first time, the collaboration with Talking Shorts, a Panel Discussion with experts and wellknown filmmakers about the theme: Low-Budget Filmmaking.

MASTERCLASS: Poetic Realism in the cinema of Rúnar Rúnarsson
with Rúnar Rúnarsson and moderated by Blerina Hankollari.

SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Oscar® Shortlist 2025 & EFA Shorts Tour 2024
For several editions, it has become a tradition to bring every year to the audience the Academy® Award shortlist of Best Short Films, Live Action & Animation, as well as the 5 best European films nominated for the Best European Short Film.

PANORAMA
with thematic and alternative sections such as GENERATIONs, NEW WORLD, DIVERGENT MINDs, PARADE, and for the second time we will bring a program of films created with AI.

KIDs & TEENs Program
is an annual program dedicated to children from 5-10 and 11+ years old with 24 short films. Kino PIRAMIDA will be available for this program where the winners will be chosen by the children’s votes.

COMPETITION & JURY
The official competition consists of:
PerspecTIFF (feature films), Documentary and Short Films: Live Action, Animation, Documentary, Video Art & Experimental, Students, Balkan shorts as well as In ALBANIAn.
These films will be evaluated by eight international juries formed by personalities of the cinematographic industry, such as:
Yves Piat, director (France – AMPAS member); Konstantina Kotzamani, director (Greece); Gianfilippo Pedote, film producer, director and screenwriter (Italy); Or Sinai, director (Israel); Menelaos Karamaghiolis, artist, filmmaker (Greece); Vuk Perovic, critic, film programmer (Montenegro); Samir Ljuma, cinematographer (Netherlands, North Macedonia); Fabrizio Bellomo, artist, filmmaker (Italy); Ana Nedeljković, visual artist, director, animator (Serbia); Adele Budina, producer (Italy); Joni Shanaj, filmmaker (Albania); Bruno Carnide, filmmaker, festival director (Portugal); Adam Selo, distributor, (Italy); and from Albania Dritan Huqi, producer; Efijeni Kokedhima, producer, curator; Elis Mataj, director, film lecturer; Anxhela Çikopano, researcher, film lecturer; Arti Lushi, writer, PR.
For the first time, TIFF creates a special Capture Frame Jury, that will evaluate the most beautiful photographic frames from documentary films. This jury is composed of visual artists and curators such as Elton Koritari, Ena Bulku and Rubin Kadiu.
Student Critics Jury formed by students of the University of Arts, who, in addition to evaluating the films selected in the official competition, will be part of TIFF Q&A video session, thus encouraging critical thinking among young filmmakers and giving them the opportunity to get to know and collaborate with foreign directors and producers participating in TIFF.
The Awards Closing Ceremony will be held on September 27, at 19:00 at the Millenium Cinema.

VENUES
The films and events of this edition will be screened in the Millenium Cinema, AGIMI Art Center, Kino Piramida, Villa 31 – Art Explora and Babel library, as well as online for the many followers who cannot attend and travel in Albania.

SUBMISSIONS & SELECTIONS STATISTICS

On online platforms, we registered about 3,245 films and 59 scripts, which submited this year from 115 countries around the world.
After a long work of several months, the group of selectors has suggested for this 23rd edition of TIFF 2025 about 192 films in competition, 12 features and 180 short films, along with the 10 screenplays selected for the 4th Screenplay ContesTIFF. All of them are world, international, regional or national premieres.
The Non-Competitive program includes 53 films.
In total will be screened 245 films, 19 feature films and 226 short films from 70 countries around the world.

INFO
Anyone interested in attending the events and national premieres of the 23rd edition of Tirana International Film Festival 2025 are requested to fill out the form at ACCREDITATION: http://tiranafilmfest.org/accreditation

For more information about the 23rd edition of the Tirana International Film Festival 2025, you can visit our website: tiranafilmfest.org, with more details about the Program, Jury, Awards and Press Kit.

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