FRACTO is an annual film festival held in Berlin since 2017, dedicated to fostering discourse around avant-garde and experimental filmmaking. The ninth edition in 2026 brings together filmmakers from Europe, North America, South America, and Asia. The program unfolds across five curated sections, three focuses, one dedicated section, and an expanded cinema work, comprising 61 films. The corpus of films inhabits a threshold: neither pure inscription nor formless abstraction, but a sensuous condition where the image exceeds description, opening onto a perceptual dimension.
A central focus is dedicated to Cécile Fontaine (France), whose work engages film as material through collage, scratching, soaking, and layering, reworking found footage into tactile reassemblies shaped by minimal means. Her presence extends into a workshop, opening this practice to a shared, hands-on exploration. A further focus is centered on Peter Todd (United Kingdom), whose practice is grounded in attentive observation, assembling in-camera sequences into quiet constellations drawn from everyday perception. Another focus turns to Moucle Blackout (Austria), whose newly restored films bring renewed attention to a distinct position within the avant-garde, combining material processes, color, and optical transformation.
The main selection brings together works by Ann Carolin Renninger & René Frölke (Germany), Chae Yu (South Korea / USA), Chanasorn Chaikitiporn (Thailand), Clara Chapus (France), Douglas Urbank (USA), Els van Riel (Belgium), Emmanuelle Nègre (France), Emmanuel Piton (France), Eri Saito (Japan), Félix Caraballo (Canada), Jiayi Chen (USA / France), Jangwook Lee (South Korea), Joel Karppanen (Finland), John Winn (USA), Magdalena Bermudez (USA), Malena Szlam (Australia / Canada / Chile), Manuel Knapp (Austria), Matt Whitman (USA), Nikita Baranov (Russia/Armenia) ,Pablo Useros & Deneb Martos (Spain), Robert Schaller (USA), Shen Xin (UK / China), Simon Payne (UK), Sophie Watzlawick (Austria), Siegfried A. Fruhauf (Austria), Vincent Guilbert (Japan), Xiao Zhang (USA), Yannick Mosimann (Switzerland), Yongha James Hwang (Japan), and Yuliya Tsviatkova (Poland / Germany), forming a field in which images emerge and recede, bodies shift through inscription and exposure, and light gives form while opening the image.
Experimental Film Treasures #1 marks the introduction of a section dedicated to full-length experimental cinema, presenting 12 Asterisci by Telemach Wiesinger (Germany) and Carriage Trade by Warren Sonbert (USA), bringing into relation a historical work and a contemporary film and opening a long-form format within FRACTO.
The festival closes with a work by Jan Kulka (Czech Republic), whose expanded cinema practice returns film to its original conditions, where the image tends toward pure spectacle and, at the threshold of visibility, folds inward in a kind of implosion as it approaches its limit.
