DA-OS cinéma proudly presents O-FEST — International Festival of Experimental Art, the first edition of a new platform for practices at the intersection of cinema, video art, performance, new media, and expanded audiovisual forms.

The festival takes place September 4–6, 2026, in Moscow, anchored at the Stanislavsky Electrotheatre with an expanded site-specific program across the city. The 2026 edition is built around the concept **"Necessary New"** — a search for the images and gestures without which it becomes impossible to move forward. The open call is now live via FilmFreeway, free of charge, open to works up to 45 minutes.

[ SUBMIT: https://filmfreeway.com/o-fest ]

The image today increasingly tends toward completion, transparency, and predictability — whether in industrial formats or in the visual systems algorithms now generate for us before we ask. O-FEST works against these logics. We are drawn to works in which the image remains suspended: not yet fixed within a genre, not yet absorbed into market classification, still carrying the potential to shift from illustration to direct impact. We do not select by medium, budget, or screening history. Only one question matters — can the work produce an autonomous image, and shift perception. Some forms move ahead of their moment; others return and begin to act again. What we are looking for is not novelty for its own sake, but the necessary new: the images without which the present cannot be rethought.

**SEPTEMBER 4–6 — Stanislavsky Electrotheatre + site-specific venues, Moscow**
Three days bringing together a competition program, curated sections, special screenings, and expanded cinema events. Curated sections this year include archival and found-footage practice, film essays and hybrid documentary forms, visual poetry, algorithmic and AI-generated imagery, works on space, memory, and the urban environment, and films that engage directly with digital decay, error, and glitch aesthetics. A dedicated night program moves cinema off the screen entirely, into sound, body, performance, and architecture.

*OPEN CALL — through August 10, 2026, via FilmFreeway, free submission**
Each work is submitted once and considered by the curatorial team across every section of the program — the festival deliberately avoids splitting entries into paid categories. Accepted forms include experimental cinema, video art, film essays, hybrid and poetic documentary, found footage and archival practice, animation, AI/generative work, expanded cinema, and interdisciplinary audiovisual projects, up to 45 minutes, premiere status not required.

https://filmfreeway.com/o-fest

O-FEST is organized by **DA-OS cinéma**, founded by **Anna Dalinger** and **Stanislav [Surname]**, who serve as the festival's co-founders, program directors, and curators. Their shared work across three prior films informs a curatorial approach that treats the festival not as a showcase of finished objects but as an open encounter with work still in the process of becoming an image.

O-FEST approaches the viewer not as a passive observer but as a participant in the process — what matters is not only the act of watching, but what continues afterward. The program will include post-screening discussions, open analyses of program blocks, lectures, and interdisciplinary encounters between artists, filmmakers, and researchers.

Event links:
Open call + submissions: https://filmfreeway.com/o-fest
Venue: Stanislavsky Electrotheatre — Moscow, Russia
Dates: September 4–6, 2026
Submission deadline: August 10, 2026