CATEGORIES
Four tightly curated programmes exploring humanity, narrative, form and reality.
Explore all four →New cinematic language. New generation.
WE WANT TO SEE
YOU IN YOUR FILM.
An independent London festival for bold short-form cinema, auteur voices, experimentation and filmmakers developing a distinct cinematic language.
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1st Edition2027London, UK
Curatorial Manifesto
CINEMA IS
ALWAYS NEW.
Every generation has had to reinvent cinema.
We want to see you in your film.
We champion short films with bold artistic vision, a distinct cinematic language and a strong auteur voice. We welcome filmmakers from different backgrounds, working with any budget, any camera and any story that needs to be told.
Read the full curatorial manifesto
From Soviet Montage to Italian Neorealism, the French New Wave and Dogme 95, cinema has repeatedly changed when filmmakers challenged inherited rules. London Nova is interested in that same impulse: not imitation, but discovery.
A small budget is not a small idea. Limitations can create rhythm, texture, urgency and new ways of seeing. We welcome film-school graduates, self-taught filmmakers, first-time directors, experienced artists and creators working across disciplines.
New technology does not automatically create new cinema. What matters is what filmmakers do with it. We do not claim to know the new cinematic language of the 21st century. London Nova exists to look for it.
Our first edition is built around a real London cinema screening, filmmaker presence where possible and audience conversation. The film becomes a conversation.
London · 2027
1ST EDITION
Our inaugural London edition: four curated competition categories, a live cinema screening and conversations around short-form work.
13 MARCH 2027
SCREENING
Cinema A · London Film School
24 Shelton Street, London, WC2H 9UB
JURY
A multidisciplinary jury spanning filmmaking, criticism, scholarship, journalism and production.
Coming soonFEEDBACK
Every submitted film is carefully reviewed across multiple aspects by our festival team and expert reviewers. Whether or not a film is selected, filmmakers receive detailed written feedback.
View your feedback →Competition Categories
FOUR WAYS TO
REIMAGINE CINEMA.
Rather than dividing films by conventional genre, London Nova's inaugural competition is organised around four questions: how cinema is changing its relationship with humanity, story, form and reality.
AI & Humanity
Films exploring the evolving relationship between artificial intelligence and human experience — identity, memory, labour, intimacy, consciousness and the future. AI may be a subject, a creative method, or both; technology alone is not the criterion.
What does it mean to be human now?Unbound Narratives
Work that challenges inherited ideas of storytelling through non-linear, fragmented, marginal, unconventional or deliberately non-traditional narrative structures and perspectives.
How else can stories be told?Beyond the Frame
Moving-image work that pushes at the boundaries of cinema through mixed media, animation and live action, screen-based forms, game engines, found footage, expanded cinema or other cross-disciplinary approaches.
Where does cinema end?New Non-Fiction
Documentary and non-fiction work that finds distinctive ways to encounter reality — including essay film, personal documentary, archival practice, docu-fiction, hybrid and experimental non-fiction.
How can cinema encounter reality?Submit your film
YOUR STORY.
OUR SCREEN.
Make something personal, strange, beautiful, difficult, quiet, angry or hard to categorise. Whatever you make, let us see you in it.
Submit your film
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