52nd International Film Weekend Würzburg

A Festival with a 50-Year History

The International Film Weekend Würzburg was founded in 1975 by the Filminitiative Würzburg and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2025. The festival is organized entirely by volunteers – without a permanent team, without six-figure budgets, but with a community of curators who select around 50 films from over 30 countries each year from over 1,000 submissions with great dedication. This mix of a passion project and curatorial quality makes the festival an institution in the German art house film scene.

Four Days, Five Screens, One Location

The venue is the Bürgerbräu Quarter in Würzburg's Zellerau district – a former brewery site that is now a cultural hub combining a cinema (Central im Bürgerbräu), a cultural space (Keller Z87), a small theater (Theater Ensemble), and the Siebold Museum. The program runs concurrently on a total of five screens and stages. Visitors to the festival stay in one place for four days and are immersed in the program – every café, every bar in the quarter becomes a meeting point for filmmakers, curators, and cinephiles.

Program Structure

The program is divided into several categories:

• Feature Films – the core, international art house films from around the world
• Documentaries – a strong tradition of the festival
• Short Films – showcase for young directors
• Children's and Youth Film – programming for younger audiences
• Late Night Slot – experimental and genre-oriented late-night screenings
• Special Events – silent film matinees with live music, retrospectives, thematic series

52nd Edition 2026 – Focus on Eastern Europe and Christian Petzold

The 52nd edition took place from January 29 to February 1, 2026. The country focus was on Eastern and Southeastern Europe, and the audience award went to two films ex aequo: DJ Ahmet (North Macedonia, also the opening film and most-watched film) and Made in EU (Bulgaria). A Christian Petzold Retrospective honored one of the most important directors of the Berlin School and German art house cinema. The architectural series "LIVING & LIFE" showed films on the theme of space, city, and living environments. A silent film matinee with live music by the Diamond Dogs rounded off the program.

Würzburg as a Cinephile City

Würzburg, an independent city on the Main river in Mainfranken, is a university and cultural city with an unusually active independent cinema scene. The Film Weekend is the annual highlight of this scene and attracts filmmakers, film scholars, and cinephiles from Mainfranken, the Rhine-Main region, Munich, and Berlin to Würzburg every year. The combination of a compact festival geography (the entire quarter within walking distance), curatorial ambition, and a democratic program structure (audience award by vote) is its hallmark.