BEAST International Film Festival is set to bring Eastern European cinema and its audiovisual culture to Porto, a thriving cultural center in Europe’s westernmost country – a bridge connecting the two sides of the Old Continent.

BEAST International Film Festival returns for its second edition in 2018, with a lot of surprises. To begin with, the program will be going on for 5 days, one day more than last year. The Festival kicks off with an opening event on the 26th of September in Cinema Trindade and will continue until 30th of September with screenings, masterclasses and workshops in some of the main cultural locations of Porto: Cinema Passos Manuel, Biblioteca Municipal Almeida Garrett, Casa das Artes, and OKNA Espaço Cultural, the headquarters of the Festival this year.

The main event of the Festival, the international short and medium film competition, is divided into 3 categories of films, each with their own prize: East Wave – fiction features, East Doc – documentaries, and EXPERIMENTALEAST – experimental films. The call for entries for the competition is still open until 15th of July and is accepting films from Eastern Europe or by filmmakers of Eastern European descent worldwide, as well as films by international filmmakers with a focus on Eastern Europe.

Every year, the Festival has a focus on one of the East European countries, unveiling its cultural richness as predominant among others. 2018’s edition of BEAST brings forth the Ukrainian unique cinematic colors of a new wave of films through the surprise opening film, a director focus, a festival visit, and much more.

To continue with, BEAST continues to include children in the program of the Festival: BEAST Kids is divided into two different sections this year: one for children between 6 – 8 years and the other for children between 8 – 12 years, as we believe strongly that cultural education needs to start at a very young age.

Also part of the program, Portuguese Abroad features Portuguese directors out of the country that needs a platform to promote their work, and masterclasses and workshops that are meant to inspire and encourage the public with the opportunity to explore contemporary and creative subjects of relevance today in Eastern Europe.

The biggest novelty of this year’s edition, though, comes through the VISEGRAD FILM HUB, which will take place in parallel with the festival activities. BEAST partners with four other festivals: Fest Anča from Slovakia, New Horizons International Film Festival in from Poland, Brno16 Film Festival from the Czech Republic and BuSho Film Festival was from Budapest with the help of the Visegrad Fund to build a schedule promoting the V4 countries. “V4 and AFTER: A FILM JOURNEY” has screenings of contemporary and archive cinema from the four countries, V4 ACADEMY, a series of workshops focused on young filmmakers and kids, but also with masterclasses for industry professionals and young animation filmmakers and The Visegrad Collection – a new creative online platform connecting professionals from Portugal and around the globe, with the new talents from Central and Eastern Europe.