How can film help us reflect on the urban age we inhabit, and on the ways cities and territories are shaped by today’s social, political, and environmental challenges?

With the 13th edition of the Arquiteturas Film Festival, we turn our attention to the lived experience of urbanisation – from the material forms of architecture to the social and cultural dynamics that define contemporary cities. We seek films that explore the contradictions of the city as a space of both opportunity and exclusion, solidarity and conflict, precarity and imagination. At a time when urbanisation permeates nearly every aspect of life, we must look beyond inherited conceptions of the city as a bounded settlement and engage with broader patterns of the urban.

We welcome diverse perspectives on film and architecture that resonate with this year’s theme, “Urban Age”. Submissions are open to films of any kind – documentary, fiction, or experimental – and of any duration – short or feature-length.

The call is open until 2 November 2025, and the Arquiteturas Film Festival will take place from 1–5 July 2026 in Porto, Portugal. Organised by INSTITUTO and directed by architect Paulo Moreira, the festival has established itself as a platform for debating and disseminating architecture in dialogue with the visual and spatial arts, critical thought, and interdisciplinary collaboration.