Film still from "Scottish Ballet: These Violent Delights" directed by Oscar Sansom and Christopher Hampson (Scotland, UK, 2026).
October’s calendar is packed with an impressive list of film festivals in and around the city. Journey from the corners of Kazakhstan to Iran, from Mongolia to the Philippines and all the way to New Zealand at the Asian Film Festival, discover gritty investigative documentaries at CLAM International Social Film Festival, set your heart racing with hair-raising fantasy and horror at Sitges International Film Festival, go hardcore with music docs at IN-EDIT and so much more!
Choreoscope, Barcelona Dance Film Festival
October 1-4, 2026, Barcelona
Choreoscope, Barcelona Dance Film Festival is dedicated not only to those passionate about dance, but also to those who enjoy quality cinema. Cinema knows no borders—neither does dance. There is a common language that unites them: the universal language of movement.
The festival features live dance performances alongside cinematic gems like Csaba Káel’s Hungarian Wedding, a film that intertwines romance with the pulsating rhythms of folk music and dance to create an artistic gem and an engaging cinematic experience; Oscar Sansom and Christopher Hampson’s Scottish Ballet: These Violent Delights, a film that blurs the lines between hallucination and memory as cinema and dance collide in a kaleidoscopic journey of belonging, defiance, and self-discovery; Helena Varvaki and Marcos Schechtman’s A Wolf Among the Swans a biographical drama that follows the extraordinary journey of Thiago Soares, a boy from the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro who trades the rhythms of hip hop for the discipline of classical ballet; and Marjolijn Prins’ Fantastique, a poetic coming-of-age film about becoming a woman, balancing between care and ambition, and the power of dedication and grand dreams.
Films will be screened at Institut del Teatre (free with online registration) and Cinemes Girona (€5). choreoscope.com
Film still from "Standing Above the Clouds" directed by Jalena Keane-Lee (USA, 2024).
IndiFest, Barcelona Indigenous Film Festival
October 5-16, 2026, Barcelona
IndiFest, Festival de Cine Indígena de Barcelona gives indigenous peoples a voice on the creative scene, allowing them to bring their demands for compliance with their internationally-recognized rights to a wider audience. The festival advocates for political and social mobilization, with activities that range from audiovisual projections to workshops, talks and more, giving local residents the opportunity to discover the different perspectives, problems, struggles and proposals for change that impact indigenous communities.
Thia year's edition is dedicated to dreams. In many indigenous worldviews, dreams are much more than individual experiences: they are spaces of knowledge, communication and orientation that connect the past, present and future with the spiritual, ancestral and territorial. Sharing and interpreting them collectively can help make decisions, anticipate threats, and guide actions that affect the community. In contexts of defending the territory, dreams can acquire a particularly significant political dimension: they become a source of orientation and legitimacy for struggles in the face of external projects or actors that threaten land, natural resources and community life forms.
The program opens with Verenice Benítez's Nunkui, a film that takes us to the heart of the Ecuadorian Amazon to narrate the awakening of a young shuar in the middle of a disputed territory. Other films on the agenda included Jalena Keane-Lee's Standing Above the Clouds, a story of inter-generational women activists, who call themselves Ku Kia'i Mauna, or guardians of the mountain; Inuk Silis Høegh's Sumé: The Sound of a Revolution, the story of a rock band that sparked a revival of Greenlandic culture and identity and paved the way for Greenland's self-government; and Ana Ts’uyeb's Li Cham, a film that offers profound insights into the concept of the "body-territory," labor, and the various forms of patriarchal and structural violence in Chiapas.
Most films are screened at Cinemes Girona with additional showings at Cinemes Zumzeig, Ateneu del Raval, Centre Cívic Pati Llimona, Nau Bostik and Paral·lel 62, as well as Cinema Catalunya in Terrassa, Ateneu de Cerdanyola and Ateneu juvenil de Cambrils. Tickets are free, but a donation is requested, and you can reserve them on the festival website. indifest.org
Film still from "Family Movie," directed by Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick (USA, 2025).
Sitges International Film Festival
October 8-18, 2026, Sitges
Sitges turns into a film lover’s paradise for a week of screenings, exhibitions and presentations of fantasy films from across the world. With a solid track record, the Sitges International Film Festival offers a stimulating framework for meetings, exhibitions, presentations and screenings. Born in 1968 as the 1st International Week of Fantasy and Horror Movies, today the festival is an essential rendezvous for movie lovers and audiences eager to come into contact with new tendencies and technologies in film and the audiovisual world.
Films confirmed this year include Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick's Family Movie, a horror-comedy created with the couple’s children, Sosie and Travis. The Official Fantastic Competition opens with the world premiere of Carlota Pereda’s Found Alive, a survival-thriller about a woman haunted by memories of being held captive by a sadistic man in her teens. Other movies with their world premieres in the competition include Pavle Vuckovic’s Frost which follows an introverted detective investigating the disappearance of a young girl in rural Serbia; the Korean horror film R-Point (2004); Clàudia Serra and Paula Serra’s 11 follows a group cut off from civilization; Víctor Moreno makes his feature-length fiction debut with the existentialist science-fiction flick The Outside and Daniel Romero’s The Daughters follows a young woman who is kidnapped, finding herself among other girls held captive and made to act like their captors’ daughters.
In the Sitges Clàssics section, iconic avenger of contemporary horror and the central figure in this year’s poster, Carrie turns fifty this year. Directed by Brian De Palma, the story of Sissy Spacek’s outburst of rage in the flesh of that shy teenager who suffered bullying in her high school will be featured in the alongside other iconic films that explore the intrigue that lies dormant beneath telekinetic powers.
Films will be screened at the Hotel Meliá Sitges, Cinema Casino Prado, Escorxador –Centre Cultural and Mercat Vell. Tickets start at €10.00 a session and can be purchased online at sitgesfilmfestival.com.
Film still from "Ziyara," directed by Simone Bitton (France, Morocco, 2020).
Barcelona Jewish Film Festival
October 13-28 & November 13-15, 2026, Barcelona
Barcelona’s Festival Cinema Jueu is dedicated exclusively to celebrating the artistry and creativity of Jewish culture, which is itself inextricably bound to the city and to Spain. Each year the festival delivers a diverse series of cinematic and artistic projects exploring a variety of genres and topics in great depth: from documentaries and feature films to independent shorts and audiovisual pieces.
For centuries, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Mediterranean were spaces of a complex and fertile coexistence between Jews and Arabs, who shared a language, traditions, and a common imaginary. For Jews and Muslims alike, Arabic was a shared territory of thought and experience, where bonds were forged that transcended any exclusionary identity. The 20th century fractured this reality: European colonization and the consolidation of modern nation-states imposed new borders upon it, replacing the complexity of these shared worlds with the logic of homogeneous identities—leaving behind displacements and wounded memories that still mark the present. This year's film cycle offers a reflection on this fragmented history. Through documentary, archive, testimony, and fiction, the selected films follow the traces of an erased coexistence and question the official narratives of separation.
Highlights in the program include No sea tu falta by Moisés Salama, Coexistence, My Ass! by Amber Fares, and Lyd by Rami Younis and Sarah Ema Friedlan.
Films are screened in original version with Catalan subtitles. You can purchase tickets at Filmoteca de Catalunya (€4 a session) and Cinemes Girona (€5 a session). fcjbarcelona.org
Film still from "Contact Tracing," directed by Amy Tofte (USA, 2025).
Love and Hope International Film Festival (L’HIFF)
October 14-17, 2026, Cinema Maldà, Barcelona
With both short and feature-length indie films, L’HIFF International Film Festival is a relatively new addition to Barcelona's festival scene. Showcasing cinema from around the world, the festival screens works from emerging directors alongside those of experienced creators. Not only does the festival show great films, it allows like-minded people to connect through their love of cinema with networking events, talks, panels, workshops and guest speakers.
Last year's festival had over 300 films and this year's program is shaping up to be just as impressive. Confirmed feature-length films this year include Amy Tofte’s Contact Tracing, a dramedy about the invisible labor of women during the 2020 pandemic; the basketball-themed feature-length documentary Open Your Eyes directed by Neil Sandoz; Cornel Gheorghita's The Snail tells a story of a love faded by time; travel and cultural documentary Why Andorra? directed by Joy Villa; Jack Blair's documentary This Is Not a Draft, a post 9/11 story of service, sacrifice and life after war; Emma Croft's character-driven comedy-drama Invincible; Sailesh Rajan Israni's documentary Rooted follows how Dubai has evolved throughout the years; Joshua Dorsey's AGELESS: Real Talk. Real Change. To End Ageism takes an honest look at the stigma surrounding ageism and aging, and many more. lhifilmfestival.com
Film still from "If on a Winter’s Night," directed by Sanju Surendran (India, 2025).
Asian Film Festival Barcelona
October 22-November 1, 2026, Barcelona
The Asian Film Festival Barcelona is back for its 13th edition with a program that includes more than a hundred films from over 20 countries in Asia and the Pacific region. Representing the geographical, political, economic and cultural diversity of a vast, multifaceted continent, Asian cinema explores historical narrative, gender issues and drama in all its dimensions. Bringing films from different cultures and ethnicities from across Central Asia, South-East Asia and Pacific Asia, the festival brings audiences on a journey from the corners of Kazakhstan to Iran, from Mongolia to the Philippines and all the way to New Zealand.
Among the more than hundreds of titles selected, India stands out this year thanks to the Focus India program, which brings to Barcelona some of the country's most relevant contemporary independent cinema. Focus India highlights 12 films produced between 2025 and 2026, distributed among the different competitive sections of the festival. They are joined by a retrospective composed of 12 other titles that explore the cinematic representation of India made from the West between 1946 and 2023.
The festival opens at CaixaForum with Sanju Surendran's If on a Winter’s Night, the story of a young couple from Kerala that seeks a new life in Delhi, but their love and ambitions are tested by prejudice, family pressures, and the city's unyielding harshness. Other confirmed films on the agenda include Master, Rezwan Shahriar Sumit's gripping drama tells the universal tale of how political ambition corrodes both community and self, as corruption takes hold; Kim Jin-yu's Journey There, a poetic exploration of family relationships and intergenerational bonds, with many more to come!
Films will be screened at Filmoteca de Catalunya, Cinemas Girona, Phenomena, CaixaForum and Zumzeig. asianfilmfestival.barcelona
Silje Evensmo Jacobsen’s "A New Kind of Wilderness" at CLAM International Social Film Festival.
CLAM International Social Film Festival
October 23-November 1, 2026, Manresa, Navarcles, St Fruitós de Bages
The International Social Film Festival in Catalunya (CLAM) showcases high-quality films committed to real life—films that shine a light on solidarity, human and civil rights, and serve as a point of reflection and debate on social issues. Numerous film screenings are complemented by parallel activities from a range of artistic and cultural disciplines, including lectures, conferences, exhibitions, professional master-classes, theater performances and concerts.
This year's program has not been released, but last year’s films included Silje Evensmo Jacobsen’s A New Kind of Wilderness (Norway, 2024), an intimate and soulful portrait of love, life, and growing up; the romantic tragicomedy My Favorite Cake (Iran, Germany, 2024) directed by Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha; Andrea Arnold's Bird (UK, 2024) a tender, striking and extraordinarily surprising coming-of-age fable; Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Iran, Germany, France, 2024) a political drama shot entirely in secret with real footage of student protests following the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022; and Joshua Oppenheimer’s apocalyptic musical film The End (USA, 2024).
Films will be screened at Multicines Bages Centre, Manresa; Auditori Agustí Soler i Mas, Navarcles; and Teatre Casal Cultural, St Fruitós de Bages. Tickets can be purchased at individual venues, see the festival website for details: clamfestival.org.
Film still from "Broken English," directed by Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth (UK, 2025).
IN-EDIT International Music Documentary Film Festival
October 29-November 8, 2026, Barcelona
Bringing together the best of the audio-visual and musical sectors, IN-EDIT Barcelona is the most successful music documentary film festival in the world. The festival opens with Jane Pollard and Iain Forsyth's Broken English, the intimate and bold swan song of Marianne Faithfull: singer, songwriter, rock icon, and tireless survivor of her own legend.
Other films on the agenda include Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson's Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs. That's The Weight of the World), the film draws on a remarkable trove of visual, audio, and written material from the group’s own vaults to get closer than ever to the personalities behind the music; Lorna Tucker's Yuja, a portrait of one of contemporary classical music’s most unique and prodigious pianists: Yuja Wang; Jonathan Stiasnye's Bowie: The Final Act, a meticulous, uncompromising look at David Bowie’s last great metamorphosis and his ability to reinvent himself in the face of adversity; Tai Uhlmann's For the Love of Dolly in tribute to the beloved country music icon who left us this summer; Lola Rock'N'Rolla's The Big Johnson reconstructs the adventures of singer, musician, LGBTIQ+ activist, escort, orgy promoter and band leader Dean Johnson; Fabien Pisani's Para vivir: El tiempo implacable de Pablo Milanés is a touching portrait of Pablo Milanés, an essential voice of the Cuban Nueva Trova; Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine's Peter Asher: Everywhere Man journeys through six decades of rock history seen through producer, manager, and superstar confidant Peter Asher; and Tamra Davis' The Best Summer, a collection of interviews with the Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth, Foo Fighters, Beck, Pavement, Rancid, The Amps, and Bikini Kill right at the peak of the alt-rock explosion.
Films are screened at Aribau Multicines. Tickets are €11.00 for individual showings, or you can buy packs for multiple sessions starting at €34 for four tickets, €64 for eight and €90 for 12, and can be shared. Purchase tickets and check out the festival’s full program online at es.in-edit.org.
Updated October 1, 2026.