Open Call Projects 2025-26
This year, we’ll be working with our open call programmers over two festivals, allowing space and time for their ideas to develop, grow and flourish into Flatpack Festival 2026.
For Flatpack 2025, each of our programmers has curated an event that on the surface look quite different to each other. However, they are linked by a theme of liberation, what life may look like in its absence and the potential for a liberatory future. We're excited to share this year's open call events and programmers with you.
Carceral Cinema, Act 1: Women in Prison
Programmed by Misha Zakharov
Misha’s Carceral Cinema project aims to spark conversations about carcerality, representations of prisons, and race and gender in the context of incarceration, through the lens of film.
This year's event showcases accounts of women in North American prisons, created by iconic social justice filmmaking duos in the wake of the Liberation era.
Christine Choy and Cynthia Maurizio’s short film Inside Women Inside (1978) offers us an intersectional insight into the experiences of women from diverse ethnic backgrounds within the American carceral system. The film paves the way for Janis Cole and Holly Dale’s intimate Genie Award-winning documentary P4W: Prison for Women (1981), filmed after a four year battle with authorities to enter the (now closed) Canadian women’s prison.
The event will end with a discussion and a curated book stand, where guests can familiarise themselves with key texts on prisons and abolitionist theory.
Decolonising Collective Futures through Capoeira
Programmed by Film Pardna
For Flatpack 2025 Film Pardna are building on work with Afroflux that saw martial art incorporated into their programming. Foregrounding capoeira as a tool for liberatory futures, the collective presents a dynamic event that brings cinema to life through film combined with live capoeira demonstration.
The programme includes The Glow of N’Golo, Film Pardna's own locally produced short exploring themes of ancestral connection and reclaiming a narrative of unity amongst the African diaspora. Affirming capoeira’s Brazilian roots the short will be followed by martial arts feature Besouro, capturing the liberatory essence of capoeira in an anti-imperialist and decolonial context.
Members of Film Pardna and Afroflux will host a collective panel discussion, exploring the themes of capoeira in decolonising collective futures.