The 31st Youth Film Festival and the 19th Four River Film Festival will bring the very best of Croatian and international high school filmmaking to Karlovac from 15th to 19th of September 2026! Organized by the Croatian Film Association and Cinema Club Karlovac, this year’s edition is slowly cooking, with the competition program set to take place at the Edison Cinema.
The program features short films in four competition categories: fiction, animation, documentary, and freestyle films.
The selected films come from all corners of the world. This year, the international competition includes films from 23 countries, selected from 1,593 submissions from 103 countries in total. The national competition also reached a new milestone with a record of 273 Croatian submissions. Once again, both Festivals have demonstrated that the universal language of film and the unique cultural setting of the city of Karlovac remain the perfect recipe for nurturing young filmmakers and inspiring the growing international interest in youth cinema.
The selection committee, including Boško Picula, Ph.D., Čejen Černić Čanak, and Jura Troje, faced the demanding task of “cooking up” this year’s competition program. After carefully reviewing 1,866 submissions, they selected 72 outstanding films to be screened at the Festivals.
The official selection for the Four River Film Festival is available here: https://frff.com.hr/official-selection-frff/
The official selection for the Youth Film Festival is available here: https://frff.com.hr/official-selection-yff/
Besides the competition program, the Festivals will offer a rich schedule of workshops, panel discussions, networking events, and accompanying activities. Every evening, audiences will also be able to enjoy free open-air film screenings at various locations on the banks of Karlovac’s four rivers.
The full Festival program will be announced soon. Stay tuned into our official channels for all the latest updates.
The Festivals are supported by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, Croatian Association of Technical Culture, the Ministry of Science, Education and Youth, Karlovac County, the City of Karlovac, the “Kultura nova” Foundation, The National Foundation for Civil Society Development, the Tourist Board of the City of Karlovac, the Technical Culture Association of the City of Karlovac and Turbing d.o.o.
