Love, Sex & Cinema Film Festival is an international, Berlin-based short film festival dedicated to cinema that treats intimacy as storytelling – not spectacle.
We showcase bold, thoughtful films that explore love, desire, vulnerability, and emotional closeness. From subtle gestures to raw encounters, the films we programme are unafraid to look closely at what it means to be human.
Love, Sex & Cinema was created to fill a curatorial gap. Films that engage openly with intimacy often fall between categories: too emotionally exposed or sexually frank for conservative festivals, yet misaligned with festivals that frame sex primarily through erotic spectacle, pornography, kink, or niche subcultures.
The festival exists for the vast middle ground, where intimacy is narrative, emotional, political, and deeply human.
We welcome narrative, documentary, and experimental short films (up to 20 minutes). Explicit sexual content – including real sex – is welcome when it serves a clear cinematic or emotional purpose, but sex does not need to be present. What matters is depth, intention, and how closeness functions within the film.
The inaugural edition will take place September 16–17, 2026, at Il Kino in Berlin, an independent cinema known for thoughtful programming and a strong film community.
Built by filmmakers, for filmmakers, the festival approaches stories of closeness, desire, and vulnerability with seriousness, openness, and respect.
What Kind of Films Are We Looking For?
We are looking for short films (up to 20 minutes) that engage seriously and thoughtfully with love, sex, intimacy, desire, and human connection.
Sex does not have to be present.
Films centred on love, longing, consent, self-love, coming of age, emotional intimacy, relational tension, etc. are just as welcome. What matters to us is not explicitness, but depth and intention.
We welcome:
Narrative shorts
Documentary shorts
Experimental work – as long as there is a clear story, idea, or emotional through-line.
Form, tone, genre are all flexible.
Explicit sexual content – including real sex – is welcome when it is used with intention. Sex can be provocative, confronting, sensual, unsettling, or even titillating. We are interested in work that understands sex as a cinematic tool, something that can carry meaning, tension, pleasure, power, or purpose.
What matters to us is that intimacy, bodies, and sexual acts are doing something within the film: shaping character, advancing an idea, challenging the viewer, or deepening the emotional or narrative experience, rather than existing in isolation or as empty spectacle.
We are less interested in work where sex is the entire point, and more interested in work where love or sex is part of a larger cinematic conversation. We are drawn to films that trust the audience, resist simplification, and approach intimacy with emotional honesty and cinematic intention.
