Film Festival Beijing
he Family Film Festival was founded in 2023 with "family" as its central theme, continually exploring image-making and narrative practices rooted in domestic experience.
The inaugural edition, themed "Turning the Camera Toward Oneself," invited leading Chinese artists and filmmakers working with family archives and personal narratives to share moving-image practices centered on the self and the family.
The second edition, titled "Reconstructing Family Memory," expanded its scope to include artists from across Asia. The featured works extended beyond documentary to encompass practices that blur the boundaries between documentary and fiction, revealing the more complex structures underlying family, memory, and intimate relationships.
Now in its third edition, the festival has witnessed a growing number of submissions and inquiries from independent creators. As a result, it has decided to launch its first open call. Lengthy discussions were devoted to questions of genre, duration, and form: Should the festival distinguish between documentaries and fiction films? Between feature-length and short works? Is such categorization necessary at all?
Ultimately, the organizers chose to return to the most fundamental impulse behind moving-image practice: as long as a work begins from the perspective of the family—whether through observation, documentation, or personal expression—it deserves to be seen. Through this more open approach, the festival hopes to embrace a broader range of authentic and diverse narratives about family.
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