Tampere Film Festival will be held for the 56th time on 4–8 March. The festival kicks off on Wednesday, 4 March, with the Opening Screening, featuring a selection of short films from various festival screenings. The festival week continues with more than one hundred film screenings until Sunday, 8 March. In addition to film screenings, the festival also hosts events open to the general public as well as events aimed at film industry professionals.
At the heart of the programme are the competition screenings in the festival’s prestigious competition categories: the International Competition, the National Competition, and the Generation XYZ Competition dedicated to genre films. The competitions culminate in the Awards and After Party on Saturday, 7 March. Alongside the competition screenings, the festival presents an extensive thematic programme and several intriguing special screenings.
Tampere Film Festival is one of Europe’s most significant short film festivals, bringing together thousands of film lovers and industry professionals in Tampere every year.
Star Guests and Emerging Talents
The 2026 festival will welcome both a Finnish and an international guest of honour: Ulla Heikkilä and Rúnar Rúnarsson. In the Spotlight: Ulla Heikkilä programme presents a retrospective of short films by director and screenwriter Ulla Heikkilä, as well as a Carte blanche screening curated by Heikkilä herself, featuring films that are important to her. At Tampere Film Festival, the following short films from her body of work will be shown: #barewithme (#sovitus, Finland, 2016), Waste Land (Joutomaa, Finland, 2016), Let Her Speak (Sweden, Finland, 2019), and Golgatha (Finland, 2016). Heikkilä will be present at the screenings and will also serve on the jury of the National Competition.
Rúnar Rúnarsson is an Icelandic film director and the founder of the production company HALIBUT. His films have received international acclaim for over two decades. In the Spotlight: Rúnar Rúnarsson screenings present a selection of his short films as well as the feature-length fiction film Echo (Bergmál, Iceland, 2019). Rúnarsson will also attend the festival in connection with the screenings, and audiences will have the opportunity to explore his career and work in a free, open-to-the-public Masterclass discussion.
Rising stars will also be given a platform in several screenings, including the student film showcases Kino-TAMK and ELO: New Student Films, as well as the PITCH screenings, which consist of award-winning graduate thesis films from a joint pitching event between five Finnish film schools.
Films on Faith, Southeast Asia, and Gems of the Archives
As part of the festival’s thematic programme, the Faith programme presents films from the 1960s to the present day that examine Christianity. The programme includes a public discussion titled Faith and Democracy.
Geographically, the 2026 programme turns its focus to Southeast Asia in the screenings 20 Years of Capturing Reality in Southeast Asia. The films shed light on the film industry of a multicultural, rapidly changing, and deeply conflicted region, documenting real life in the area. The programme also includes a discussion event where invited guests will talk about what it is like to make films in a politically unstable region.
Gems from the Archives are showcased in the National Audiovisual Institute’s Finnish Film Archive screenings. The programme dives into the 100-year history of the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle), 20th-century Tampere, and different decades of Finnish youth culture.
Following the tradition of the late festival legend Raimo “Rake” Silius’s Rake Special, this year’s successor is Films Worth Kisses, a programme curated by Festival Director Jukka-Pekka Laakso, consisting of memorable films from the history of Tampere Film Festival.
Special Screenings and Activities for Children
The special screenings include the traditional free live-accompanied screening at Tampere Cathedral, featuring the silent film classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Germany, 1920). A world premiere will be held for the feature-length Vastavirta Documentary (Finland, 2026), which delves into the history of a legendary punk club in Tampere. To mark International Women’s Day on 8 March, the festival will screen the documentary The Day Iceland Stood Still (Iceland, 2024), about the women’s general strike that transformed Iceland in 1975, as well as Force of Habit (Finland, 2019).
Free events combining discussion and film include Böhle Studios: Animations, showcasing all three animated films by Böhle Studios, and Witness: Arctic Indigenous Voices III, presenting a documentary programme by filmmakers from Indigenous peoples of the Arctic region.
For younger audiences, free screenings of Minikino 1 and 2 are offered: the first features short films suitable for children aged 3 and over, and the second for children aged 7 and over.
Explore the full festival week programme on the Tampere Film Festival website.
Screening tickets and Serial Cards are available to purchase on the Tampere Film Festival website. The festival’s own ticket outlets will open on 2 March. More information about tickets can be found on the Tickets page of the Tampere Film Festival website.
Article photo: Érica Dahlström-Dezonne
