INTERNATIONAL FOUND FOOTAGE COMPETITION Thursday, March 20, 8:45 PM, Motorenhalle, Wachsbleichstraße 4a (Backyard), 01067 Dresden

Found film and audio material as the linchpin of a film—that's what the International Found Footage Competition is looking for. The audience and jury will be looking at the breadth of this field of experimentation: analog and digital, historical and brand-new material is there to be discovered and awarded.

Congratulations to the winners of the Found Footage Competition 2026

The jury prize of 500 € goes to
Delfina Carlota Vazquez – WATER DISSOLVES ITS IMAGE, THE LANDSCAPE DISAPPEARS
03:30 min, 2025, 16 mm, Argentina

The audience award of 300 € for research work and also the honorable mention of the jury goes to 
Céline Berger  – OVERWORK
10:10 min, 2025, 16 mm, Germany

Jury: Michael Baute, Anke Hahn, Lia Sudermann und Simon Nagy

We would like to thank the award sponsors of the Found Footage Competition

SAVE - Safeguarding Audiovisual Heritage in Saxony is a joint program of the SLUB Dresden and the Film Association of Saxony, it is financed by tax funds on the basis of the budget adopted by the Saxon State Parliament.

Super 8 Magazine is also sponsoring an annual subscription for the jury's honorable mention. The magazine is published in both German and English and is the only print magazine worldwide that deals with the subject of schmalfilm: www.super8mag.de

The 2026 nominees:

Antje Meichsner – DEAD
07:16 min, 2025, Germany
Found footage pictures show a village in socialist times in East Germany near Hoyerswerda – and some of their inhabitants dancing. The inner contradictions of the place are expressed in the musical spoken word piece combined with the pictures.

Céline Berger – OVERWORK
10:10 min, 2025, 16 mm, Germany 
The found-footage short film OVERWORK offers a personal reinterpretation of a collection of instructional 16mm films from the German Employment Agency.

Dave Johnson – ON THE GLUE
03:02 min, 2025, 16 mm, Canada
From the depths of London England’s Barracks district amongst the derelict weapons huts, comes a public service expose from the 1970’s revealing “THE HORRORS” of kids participating in the act of glue sniffing and its effects. The narrative is told in three parts: The reporter, a mother and her “addict son”, David.  

Delfina Carlota Vazquez – WATER DISSOLVES ITS IMAGE, THE LANDSCAPE DISAPPEARS
03:30 min, 2025, 16 mm, Argentina
Images of a decomposing nature combine with rain drops and fungi living in the organic matter of film. Relato de un río (1945) is a short film produced by the Instituto de Cinematografía, celebrating the Iguazú National Park, a roll so affected by hydrolysis than cannot be projected without being destroyed. 

Greta Bonnaud – IN THE HANDS OF TIME
03:30 min, 2025, Super 8, United Kingdom
Suffering from Alzheimer's, a man watches a Super 8 home movie from the 1970's at his son's request. The images of holidays at his grandparents' house awaken buried sensations, the gentleness of the wind, the warmth of the sun, the tranquility of childhood. This film was created using footage reworked during the Nice 2024 and Cambridge 2025 scratch workshops.

Jeremy Drummond – MONUMENT
16:45 min, 2025, Super 8, Canada, United States
Beginning in ghostly abstraction and accumulating texture by texture into a droning meditative trance, Monument deepens to a visual and sonic intensity, mixing Super 8 film with video footage to create a complicated, multilayered encounter with the tension of protest and reclamation. A vivid and energetic durational experience of collective resistance and celebration.
Super 8 footage of the decaying monuments of Presidents Park (Croaker, VA) are layered with video footage captured on Monument Avenue (Richmond, VA) during the Covid-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. Themes of registration and re-calibration are explored through form and content and the distinct features of the media employed.

Maria Vittoria Daquino – DOMUS DE JANAS
07:55 min, 2024, Italy
A feminine and vengeful invocation against the notorious defacers of worship sites: the grave-robbers.

Olive Harrington – OUR EYES MEET SQUINTING
05:30 min, 2025, United Kingdom
A century collides as light re-exposes the 9.5mm found footage onto 35mm, paired with sound from the filmmaker’s personal journey in France. The film explores the tensions between past and present, movement and stasis, preservation and transformation. Today’s noise animates a past journey; a search for contact resurrects a family.

Panu Johansson – WHEREVER STREET PIECE
08:49 min, 2025, 16 mm, Finland
"Wherever Street Piece" is a found footage film that describes impersonal and fragmented memories that cannot be directly linked to the life of one particular individual. Simultaneously the film documents the way these past realities - forgotten people in forgotten situations - blend together from the perspective of the present. Obviously not everything can be stored and passed on, but If we neglect the lessons of the past, are we also bound to repeat its mistakes?

Patrick Doyon – DIZZY CAVALRY
01:00 min, 2025, Canada
An 8mm reel of a Hollywood western flickers to life once more. As the first call of the bugle rings out, the cavalry charges—swift and chaotic—while the film strains to keep pace. It ripples, trembles and tangles, caught in the chaos of gunfire and the thunder of galloping hooves.

Pere Ginard – I THINK I SAID "YES"
04:17 min, 2025, Spain
think I said (I...insect...scare...bird...eye...tear...thing...heartbeat... centaur...dream...mylove...) yes.

Philippe Leclert – 5 MINUTES OF FORGOTTEN STREAM
05:00 min, 2025, France
Ancient movements and journeys. Men and women filmed their travels. From all these journeys, these crossings, from all these roads, these cities, these countrysides, there resulted a flow of images in an incessant scrolling.