FRACT0

Experimental Encounters 2026

FRACTO is an annual film festival held in Berlin since 2017, dedicated to fostering discourse around avant-garde and experimental filmmaking.

The ninth edition in 2026 brings together filmmakers from Europe, North America, South America, and Asia. The program unfolds across five curated sections, three focuses, one dedicated section, and an expanded cinema program, comprising 93 films.

The corpus of films inhabits a threshold: neither pure inscription nor formless abstraction, but a sensuous condition where the image exceeds description, opening onto a perceptual dimension. Across the main selection, images emerge and recede, bodies shift between presence and exposure, and light gives form while opening the image.

A central focus is dedicated to Cécile Fontaine (France), whose work engages film as material through collage, scratching, soaking, and layering, reworking found footage into tactile reassemblies shaped by minimal means. Her presence extends into a workshop, opening this practice to a shared, hands-on exploration. A further focus is centered on Peter Todd (United Kingdom), whose practice is grounded in attentive observation, assembling in-camera sequences into quiet constellations drawn from everyday perception. Another focus turns to Moucle Blackout (Austria), whose newly restored films bring renewed attention to a distinct position within the avant-garde, combining material processes, color, and optical transformation.

Experimental Film Treasures marks the introduction of a section dedicated to full-length experimental cinema, presenting 12 Asterisci by Telemach Wiesinger (Germany) and Carriage Trade by Warren Sonbert (USA), bringing into relation a historical work and a contemporary film and opening a long-form format within FRACTO.

The festival closes with a program of three works by Jan Kulka (Czech Republic), including the world premiere of Fringe Shades, whose expanded cinema practice exposes film to its conditions of display, where the image tends toward pure spectacle through shock, physical eruption, and attraction, folding inward in a kind of implosion as it approaches its limit.