Artists' Film International 2025

Artists’ Film International 2025: Dream States
Worldwide presentations 3 March - 31 December 2025

Dream States — the 18th edition of Artists’ Film International — commences on 3 March 2025 with a visionary programme of artists’ moving image. Exploring dreaming as both a transformative state and a radical act, the films in Dream States challenge perceptions of reality and open pathways to alternative futures. Curated by Forma with 16 cultural institutions across four continents, this year’s edition showcases a remarkable cohort of artists, each selected or commissioned by an AFI’25 partner. Presented in diverse formats, including exhibitions, festivals, and screenings, AFI’25 unfolds across the partners’ venues throughout 2025, guiding global audiences through mythic worlds, dystopian landscapes, fractured memories, and speculative possibilities.

At the intersection of personal consciousness and external realities, Dream States explores the emancipatory potential of dreams, altered states, and cinematic illusion. The programme foregrounds artists who disrupt linear time, blur fact and fiction, and navigate the boundaries between memory, myth, and fantasy to reimagine the world anew. Using an array of visual strategies, from analogue footage to CGI animation, layered archival materials, special effects and AI-generated imagery, these works harness moving-image to destabilise dominant perspectives. Reflecting upon shared histories, the artists’ eclectic and surreal dreamscapes - utopian and dystopian, intimate and collective - position cinema as the crucible of dream-making and a vehicle for changemaking.

Find full film details and information on the artists at the pages below.