OPEN CALLS POETRY FILM COMPETITIONS 2025

ART VISUAL & POETRY FILM FESTIVAL
April 7-10, 2026 | KÜNSTLERHAUS VIENNA

The Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival in Vienna is currently the second-largest poetry film festival worldwide. We support productions from German-speaking countries through the main competition. Since many high-quality films are produced outside the border triangle of Switzerland, Austria, Germany, we have created a new competition in 2023: the international Poetry Performance Film Award. With this, we acknowledge the overall quality and importance of international filmmaking for our festival! 

TEXT & POETRY FILMS FROM AUSTRIA, GERMANY, AND SWITZERLAND

Poetryfilms are a hybrid art film genre between literature and film. They encompass Schriftfilms (text films), narrative shorts,  animated films, cartoons, and experimental films. The openness and creative experimental space make poetry films an  exciting medium for many artists to create poetry films. Just like last time, we are looking for experimental, deeply thought-provoking, as well as humorous poetry films in our calls for submissions. In short: literary short films that move the audience and have a lasting effect on the viewer. The main competition is open to filmmakers from based in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. In addition, a second competition, our international poetry  performance film award will be announced, aiming at the art of filming a poetry performance with a camera.
This second main prize of the festival will be awarded by the audience in the cinema hall on site!

TO THE DEFINITION: WHAT IS A POETRY FILM?

Whether abstract, classical, with animation, narrative or cinematographic: the genre of poetry film presents itself internationally colorful and diverse;,  as many definitions exist. Scottish photographer and filmmaker Alastair Cook describes poetry film as  "a single entwined entity, a melting, a cleaving together of words, sound and vision. It is an attempt to take a poem and present it through a medium that will create a new artwork, separate from the original poem." 
In contrast to the Anglo-American world, the Vienna Poetry Film Festival defines the term poem very broadly: Everything is allowed that lives up to the predicate "literary": from abstract sound poems, script films, poetic prose, political theater, performance spoken word texts to philosophical texts about poetry that appear in the film context under the term essay film.

AWARD GERMAN SPEAKING COUNTRIES - DEADLINE DECEMBER, 15, 2025 | FILM LENGTH UP TO 20 MIN

The main competition is announced transnationally for the entire German-speaking area. German language is desired, as we do not want to permanently drag the predominantly German-speaking audience into subtitle reading. In exceptional cases, we also accept foreign language films with German or English subtitles in the main competition. With the Award German Speaking Countries we address all those filmmakers who either reside in Austria, Switzerland, and Germany or have Austrian, German or Swiss citizenship. The films selected for the competition will be presented in at the Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival in Vienna in spring 2026. The winner will be announced during the festival.

POETRY PERFORMANCE FILM AWARD - DEADLINE DECEMBER 15, 2025 | FILM LENGTH UP TO 7 MIN

Poetry performed for the camera. The camera as stage and audience at the same time. The lyrical moment, captured behind the lens. The performance of the poetic is embalmed in time with light, experienced by the audience through film. The challenge here is not just to film a performance, but rather to think of the medium of film as part of the performance, so that the poetry performance develops a life of its own through the carefully constructed interplay of text/body, image and sound. The new International Poetry Performance Film Prize is open for entries world-wide. The competition will include poetry films with dance, poetry films with performance/acting, as well as performance poetry films from the visual arts, spoken word and poetry slam.

JURY

As in the previous year, the Award German Speaking Countries will be determined by an honorary jury.

PRIZES WITH PRIZE MONEY

We will award the prizes in coordination with our partners & sponsors. Final prize money amounts will be announced at a later date. Currently planned and secured are the prize money:
AWARD GERMAN SPEAKING COUNTRIES:  € 1000.-
POETRY PERFORMANCE FILM AWARD       € 1000.-  

SCREENINGS

The selected films will be screened during the ART VISUALS & POETRY FILMFESTIVAL April 7-10, 2026, in Vienna. The winners will be announced and awarded during the festival! In addition, we occasionally make poetry film screenings as part of ON TOUR with other organizers.

DEADLINE

Award German Speaking Countries/ Poetry Performance Film Award       Deadline December 15, 2025
 

Submissions
 Submit either via Filmfreeway with a small fee or without any costs via this online form: here: 
Link to the online form!

THE CONDITIONS OF PARTICIPATION

The following conditions must be met for successful participation:
- The submitted literary short film or poetry film has a length of 2 min to max. 20 minutes and is based on a literary text. For the new Poetry Performance Award:  length up to 7 min.
-The text or poetry film is not older than 10 years (from the year of creation 2015).
- The film is submitted here for the first time: films submitted in previous years will not be considered.
- For the main competition: the director is from the German-speaking region or resides in one of the countries Austria, Switzerland, Germany. International collaborations within the team (composer / writer) are allowed.
- Art Visuals & Poetry receives the right to publicly present the films in the competition.
- Film submission will arrive in time. Deadline: December 15, 2025 Competition German speaking countries/Poetry Performance Film Award)
-SCREENING FORMAT: Films must be submitted in one of the following formats: mov. or mp4 file, H264, sound 48 000 kHz, 16 bit.

We will do the sightings electronically via internet link, (vimeo/ Dropox) or via other via the FilmFreeway platform. Please do not send us any films for the time being!  Screening versions will be collected later on. The selected films must be available in screening quality shortly after selection. Also, please send the additional information by e-mail to office@filmpoetry.com only after the selection has been made. We would like: a brief artist biography (max. ½ page), a short synopsis, as well as a still from the film (300dpi).

Contact address for inquiries or further questions: office@filmpoetry.com 

We are looking forward to receiving many exciting film submissions!

In 2023, a three-person jury will decide on the awarding of the main prizes. The Poetry Performance Film Prize will be independently curated by the slam poetess Katharina Wenty. The Viennese audience will decide on the major international Poetry Film Award.

Grand jury awards  2023 - three people in the jury

 Award German Speaking Countries | Prize-money € 1000.-

 SPECIAL AWARD based on Manfred Chobot | Prize-money € 500.-

Small jury award 2023 - Katharina Wenty

Poetry Performance Film Award |  Preisgeld € 250.- 

JURY

Sigrun Höllrigl ( festival director, poetess, poetry film maker)

Born in Innsbruck in 1966, Sigrun Höllrigl grew up in Switzerland. She studied German language and literature and philosophy in Vienna. Since 2008 she works as a freelance artist in the fields of literature, film, media art and cultural event organization. In 2015 the lyrical novel Odysseus X/Ulysses X was published by edition keiper Graz. In 2016 the 2nd novel " Das Lager/The Camp" was published at edition keiper.  With her poetry films Sigrun Höllrigl is represented at international film festivals. Since 2011 she is the director of the ART VISUALS & POETRY film festival in Vienna, which became the second largest poetry film festival world-wide. Sigrun Höllrigl is a poetry film expert due to her decade of poetry film festival curating. She lives in Vienna and Lower Austria.
https://sigrunhoellrigl.net/

Mersolis Schöne  (film maker, fine arts, researcher)

Mersolis Schöne is a multidisciplinary film artist, visual artist, and researcher
based in Vienna, Austria. In his cinematic work, he deals with methods of film-based philosophising as well as with the communication of art, philosophy, and science. In his process-oriented approach, he combines these methods withexperimental and poetic forms. In 2017 he founded Moving Thought – Film+Philosophy (www.movingthought.org) to implement projects that focus on these purposes.
He has received national and international recognition for his films and served as a juror at several international film festivals.

https://www.mersolisschoene.com | https://linktr.ee/mersolis

Hubert Sielecki (film maker, poetry film maker,  fine artist, co-curator)    

Born 1946 in Carinthia (Austria)  Hubert Sielecki studied 1968-1976 at the University
of Applied Arts in Vienna and at the Film School in Lodz, Poland. In 1982 he graduated from the University of Applied Arts in the painting class under Maria Lassnig he established the Studio for Experimental  Animation Film, which he directed until 2012. Hubert Sielecki is a screenwriter, director, cinematographer, musician, sound technician, performer, draftsman, painter. He makes auteur films and uses mainly
the technique of animated film. For his work Hubert Sielecki has received numerous prizes and awards in Austria and abroad.

www.hubert-sielecki.at
 

NEW PRIZE 2023

  Jury Poetry Performance Film Award |  prize-money € 250.-

Katarina Wenty (slam poetess, moderator, organizer, poetry film maker)

Katharina Wenty, born in Korneuburg in 1995, grew up in Vienna, where she studied theater, film and media studies as well as multimedia. As a filmmaker she has already been part of several short film festivals, as well as winner of the Media Literacy Award, the Zeit:impuls Short Film Award and many more. Since 2016, she has been performing on stages with self-written texts and is considered one of the most successful spoken word artists in the German-speaking world with over 500 performances in more than 15 countries. In 2018 she became Poetry Slam National Champion for Vienna, Lower Austria and Burgenland as well as finalist of the Poetry Slam European Championship in Budapest. Since the age of 18, she has published in various national and international anthologies and literary magazines, and in 2022 her book "Hautflügelmieder" was published by the publisher Lektora.

https://www.katharinawenty.com/

New festival date April 7-10, 2026

In 2026, we tried something new for the first time: we attempted to position the Vienna Poetry Film Festival as ideally as possible within Vienna's calendar of events and cultural activities. The festival was therefore moved from autumn to spring, before the Vienna Festival. The 8th edition of the Vienna Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival is planned for April 7-10, 2026.

However, in our search for the ideal festival date, unforeseen organizational obstacles arose, so that in the future we will return to holding the festival in the fall, as was always the case in the past. What makes our festival special is that we keep the poetry film competitions open for several months. This ensures a high quality of submissions.

Apart from that, we are excited to see how the current world situation is reflected in poetry films and look forward to seeing the new films with you! 

Deadline for poetry film submissions will be the 15th of December 2025. 

Festival 2023 | 7th edition I

FESTIVAL PROGRAM 2023 - Overview
Details upcoming!

From November 14th to 17th, 2023, the seventh edition of the Art Visuals & Poetry Film Festival will be held at the Künstlerhaus Vienna. The festival celebrates its 10th anniversary in its alignment as a poetry film festival. During four days the festival will again offer a multi-layered program around film and poetry with film talks, performances, international shorts, film guests, and readings in addition to the competition entries.

Host country 2023 is Greece.

Participation through the competitions | curated side-program

- AWARD GERMAN SPEAKING COUNTRIES (made for filmmakers in German-speaking Austria/Germany/Switzerland)
- NEW! PERFORMANCE POETRY FILM AWARD (international call for entries)
- SPECIAL AWARD (international call for entries)