Fribourg Film Festival Sidebars Spotlight Colombia, Mothers in Film and Audience Picks

Alongside its international competition, the 40th edition of the Fribourg Intl. Film Festival unfolds across a wide range of parallel programs that expand the festival’s focus beyond premieres to retrospectives, thematic sections, and audience-curated screenings.

Set for March 20–29 in the Swiss city of Fribourg, this year’s edition revisits the event’s origins while highlighting emerging filmmaking scenes and genre traditions from around the world.

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Revisiting the Festival’s Origins
A key strand, Deciphering: The 1st Edition of FIFF looks back to the festival’s inaugural edition in 1980, when the event was launched under the name Festival of Third World Film. That first lineup introduced audiences in the Swiss university town to works from regions that were rarely represented in European theatrical circuits at the time.

The Deciphering program revisits five of the seven films screened during that inaugural year, giving audiences a rare chance to experience some of the festival’s earliest highlights. The lineup includes “Yawar Mallku” (“Blood of the Condor,” 1969) by Bolivian director Jorge Sanjinés, the harrowing story of an indigenous community secretly sterilized by a Peace Corps-like organization; “Muna Moto” (1975) from Cameroonian director Jean-Pierre Dikongue-Pipa, the country’s first widely distributed film, examining the social pressures of the dowry system; and “Sun of the Hyenas” (1977) by Tunisian filmmaker Ridha Behi, a powerful exploration of the lingering devastation of colonialism.

The retrospective will be accompanied by a roundtable bringing together figures connected to the festival’s early history, examining how the circulation of global cinema has evolved since the early 1980s.

A Farewell to Visions Sud Est
Another retrospective strand honors the legacy of one of Europe’s most important development initiatives for filmmakers from the Global South. The Bye Bye Visions Sud Est section pays tribute to the Swiss-backed fund Visions Sud Est that supported dozens of projects from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe, before ceasing operations this year.

The program pairs short films shown at past editions of FIFF with feature-length projects those same filmmakers went on to make later in their careers. Among the five pairings are Indian director Payal Kapadia’s early short “And What Is the Summer Saying?” alongside her Cannes Grand Prix-winning feature “All We Imagine Is Light,” Moroccan director Faouzi Bensaïdi’s FIFF-winning short “La Falaise” with “Death for Sale,” his feature film awarded in the Panorama section in Berlin in 2012, and “White Noise,” the 2017 short from international jury member Ahmad Ghossein of Lebanon and his debut feature “All This Victory,” which took home the Critics’ Week Grand Prize at Venice.

Across these pairings, the retrospective illustrates how early festival exposure and development support helped propel emerging filmmakers onto the international stage.

Colombia in the Spotlight
This year’s New Territory spotlight turns to Colombia, the first Latin American country to be featured in the section, with a curated selection of films from the past decade showcasing the diversity of its growing cinema scene. The strand will offer filmgoers the chance to see 10 feature-length films and six shorts.

The program, selected with assistance from Swiss-Colombian filmmaker Jorge Cadena (”El Cuento de Antonia”) gathers works from Colombian directors whose films have circulated widely on the international festival circuit, reflecting the increasing visibility of the country’s cinematic output. The section offers audiences a snapshot of a national cinema shaped by diverse genres and storytelling traditions, from social drama to crime narratives.

Titles include Simón Mesa Soto’s “Un poeta,” winner of the jury prize in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard section in 2025, and 2022 Venice nominee “Anhell 69” from Theo Montoya.

Mothers at the Center of Genre Cinema
FIFF’s Cinéma de Genre sidebar this year explores portrayals of motherhood across international genre filmmaking.

The program entitled Thank You, Mom! places maternal figures at the center of stories spanning melodrama, horror and psychological thrillers.

The section also pays tribute to Magda Bossy, FIFF’s founding director, celebrating her role in bringing the festival to life and shaping its 40-year legacy.

Audience-Curated Screenings
The Audience Choice section continues FIFF’s experiment in participatory programming, inviting festivalgoers to help shape the lineup. Three hundred votes were cast across 50 films, with five titles ultimately selected, blending well-known classics with unexpected rediscoveries, echoing the theme of motherhood.

Featured films include Pedro Almodóvar’s darkly comic “Volver,” which explores a mother-daughter relationship through family drama and supernatural elements, and Jane Campion’s Oscar-winning “The Piano,” the story of a mute mother navigating love and freedom after an arranged marriage.

Spotlight on Kaouther Ben Hania
Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania will receive the inaugural Fribourg Cinema Award, a joint prize with the University of Fribourg that includes an honorary diploma. Nominated for the Oscar for best international film this year for “The Voice of Hind Rajab” (2025), Ben Hania is no stranger to FIFF having served on the international jury in 2018. A festival sidebar Fribourg Cinema Award features five films curated by Ben Hania, including “A World Not Ours” from Danish-Palestinian director Mahdi Fleifel and “Under the Fig Trees” a Tunisian coming-of-age drama from director Erige Sehiri. A public conversation with the director will be held ahead of the awards ceremony.

Focus on Local Talent
While the festival’s lineup is largely international, FIFF maintains space for Swiss cinema through the Passeport Suisse program, highlighting films connected to the country’s filmmaking community.

The anniversary edition also includes a short-film competition open to residents of the canton of Fribourg, welcoming participants from students to first-time filmmakers. This year’s competition focuses on ice hockey, one of the region’s most popular sports, with selected films screened during the festival.

Other sections include Make It Family Time, featuring films for young audience members and Midnight Screenings, a lineup steeped in horror and action.