September 23–November 9, 2025
Founded in 2005 in Zagreb, 25 FPS Festival is an annual international film festival showcasing experimental, innovative and artists’ films and videos and its expanded displays to honor recent experiments in cinema and acknowledge exuberant history of the avant-garde.
Its 21st edition opens with Rosa Barba’s exhibition, international and Croatian competitions, curated side programs, live audiovisual performances and conversational programs. The 2025 festival is encapsulated by the title “Endings We Made”, offering a haunting exploration of humanity's fragility, navigating the turbulence of existential crises, wars, and the disillusionment of our time. Films immerse audiences in visceral reflections on our fractured world, where uncertainty and conflict collide, showing us a stark image of the world we’ve shaped.
The 21st edition will present new works by Antoine Chapon, Malena Szlam, Gabriel Abrantes, John Smith, Kyujae Park, Sarah Lasley, Alejo Franzetti, Yuyan Wang, Eric Stewart, Randa Maroufi, Florian Fischer, Johannes Krell, Dorian Jespers, Nada El-Omari, Émilien Dubuc, Rhea Storr, Juan Francisco Rodríguez, Caroline Monnet, Adrià Expòsit-Goy, Noémie Lobry, Zachary Epcar, fleuryfontaine, Billy Roisz, Benjamin Darville, Nicolas Gourault, Mike Hoolboom, Maja Ležaić, Marija Georgiev, Tin Žanić, Vladislav Knežević, Karla Mesek.
Curated programs by jury members will expose non-fiction films focused on the adventurous sonic approaches that can be found in the experimental terrain of cinema (Stoffel Debuysere), women filmmakers (Erika Balsom), and emotional mechanics of popular media (Michael Robinson). Expanded Cinema live performances by Enrique del Castillo "Umbráfono" and La Cellule d'intervention Metamkine will liberate the image from the screen and place it into new spatial contexts, while discussion-driven initiative New Realities and film program Raw Data – The Origins of Digital Film, both in collaboration with European Short Film Network, will question spectatorship in the landscape of fractured attention.
Rosa Barba's exhibition Meaning Distances opens 25 FPS Festival at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, bringing together a selection of sculptural film works. Barba’s conceptual explorations of film probe historical records, personal narratives, and the sensory experience of cinema and sound, often by recording natural landscapes and human-made changes to the environment. Landscape acts here as a pivotal actor in relation to transforming socio-political, cultural and architectural situations. Using performative framing as a strategic device, her films question the instability of knowledge, explore myths, and scientific experiments.
Throughout the two decades, 25 FPS Festival has become one of the havens for adventurous cinema, where the most intriguing and renowned filmmakers, sound artists, audiovisual performers and curators have been presenting their works: Bruce McClure (performing artist, US), Daïchi Saïto (filmmaker, CA), Alex Mendizabal (musician, ES/IT), Eve Heller (filmmaker, US/AT), Joost Rekveld (filmmaker, NL), Ivan Ladislav Galeta (filmmaker, HR), Edwin van der Heide (musician, artist, NL), Telcosystems (audiovisual collective, NL), Ben Rivers (filmmaker, UK), Thomas Köner (musician, DE), Sandra Gibson, Luis Recoder, Olivia Block (filmmakers/composers, US), Peter Tscherkassky (filmmaker, AT), Beatrice Gibson (filmmaker, UK), Marko Tadić (animation and visual artist, HR), Karl Lemieux (filmmaker, CA), Peter Kubelka (filmmaker, AT), Taka Iimura (artist/filmmaker, JP), Ben Russell (filmmaker, US), Deborah Stratman (filmmaker, US), George Clark (curator/filmmaker, UK/HK), Mara Mattuschka (visual artist/filmmaker, AT), Mark Toscano (archivist/filmmaker, US), Mika Taanila (artist/filmmaker, FI), Laida Lertxundi (filmmaker, ES), Julien Maire (media artist, FR), Christoph Migone (artist, CA).
25 FPS Association organizes the 21st edition in partnership with Kinoteka cinema and Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Art-kino in Rijeka and Multimedia Cultural Centre in Split.
