Barq : Call for submissions

The BARQ Festival, International Architecture Film Festival Barcelona, celebrates its 4th edition from Oct 1st to Oct 6th 2024, which will take place onsite in the city of Barcelona and online at Filmin.

The BARQ Festival is the only film festival dedicated to architecture and interior design in Spain and it is an initiative of Nihao Films, a production company specialized in architectural films, with the support of Fundació Mies van der Rohe, Arquin-FAD, and the Architects’ Association of Catalonia – COAC.

The BARQ Festival is a film festival dedicated to analyse and to deepen in the relationships between architecture and the seventh art. Cinema uses architecture to show and create worlds exploring social realities, and architecture uses cinema to reach all of the society.

With an extensive program that includes a selection of national and international documentary films and various parallel activities (talks, debates, workshops, conferences), the BARQ Festival brings to all its audience new perspectives on the creative processes behind architectural practice through cinema.

By showcasing a selection of the most recent national and international productions in the field, the festival will serve as a platform for architectural films and cinema inspired by architecture from a social perspective. Our main objective is to bring the most current issues of contemporary architecture practice to the general public through cinema, creating a space for critical reflection on the spaces we inhabit.

Awards & Prizes

· BARQ Award to Best Documentary Film: Awarded by the Jury of the competition documentary feature films section. It consists of a 1,500€ prize and a statuette.

· BARQ Award to Best Documentary Short Film: Awarded by the Jury of the documentary short films section in competition. It consists of a 600€ prize and a statuette.

The festival’s organization has the right to modify, add or update the awards. Also, the festival’s organization reserves the right to improve the amount or quantitative value of each award described above.

The 4th edition of the BARQ Festival will also celebrate a special screening in Madrid with the films and short films awarded at this year's edition. The festival’s organization will contact the people responsible for each work to agree on the conditions of this special session, which will be celebrated after the dates of the BARQ Festival 2024.

Rules & Terms

The festival's program brings together documentary feature films and documentary short films from around the world related to architecture, interior design, urban planning and the built environment from a social perspective.

The theme of the productions must necessarily be linked and/or related to the art of architecture.

Films that through architecture expose, in an innovative and original way, other current issues such as urban activism, politics, economy, environment, territoriality, cultural and social diversity, housing, coexistence and equal rights among people, etc. will be especially valued.

The quality, originality and technical and artistic solidity of the productions will be prioritized. Special attention will be granted to productions that have not participated in other festivals and/or that have not been commercially released.

Productions of another artistic nature such as videoclips, videodance works, video art, videobooks or corporate videos curated by architects or architecture studios produced to promote architectural works, buildings or other specific architectural and / or urban projects are not accepted. In case of receiving works of this nature during the registration or programming period that the festival dictates, they will be automatically discarded without being considered.

The program of the festival is presented in the following sections or categories:

DOCUMENTARY FEATURE FILMS IN COMPETITION: Competitive section of documentary feature films of any nationality that meet the following requirements:
• Completed after January 1st 2022.
• Not been commercially released in theatres, video, television or VOD platforms in Spain.
• Not having participated in festivals or audiovisual events in Catalonia (the screening at BARQ Festival must be, at least, a Catalan premiere).
• The minimum length of feature films must be 50 minutes.

DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILMS IN COMPETITION: Competitive section of documentary short films of any nationality that meet the following requirements:
• Completed after January 1st 2022.
• Not been commercially released in theatres, video, television or VOD platforms in Spain
• Not having participated in festivals or audiovisual events in Catalonia (the screening at BARQ Festival must be, at least, a Catalan premiere).
• The maximum duration of short films cannot exceed 30 minutes.

The festival’s organization reserves the right to program, as an exception, films and short films that do not meet the requirements mentioned in this document under programming criteria.

PROGRAMMING EXCEPTIONS
In the same way, within its programming, the BARQ Festival can program fiction feature films and / or short films and hybrid works in their narrative and genre approach, halfway between fiction, non-fiction or documentary, and architecture.

These works will also be able to formalize their submissions directly through FilmFreeway.

The festival selection and programming committee will decide, internally, whether these works (both short films and feature films) participate in the festival in competition or out of competition as stipulated under programming criteria.