AFO60: Sixty years of film, science, and searching for new perspectives

AFO is celebrating its 60th birthday! Instead of a nostalgic retrospective, AFO’s 60th jubilee, which runs from 22–27 April 2025, is looking boldly ahead. The first AFO was an experiment. The 60th AFO is a Work in Progress. The festival, as a metaphor for any kind of group project in preparation, in process, and in the future, will emphasise the dynamics of scientific disciplines and the constant transformation of the world around us.

The most important change this year is the expansion of competition categories and festival prizes. We are adding an immersive media competition, in order to devote more attention to virtual and extended reality. New VR and XR films and interactive works await our audiences. In addition to the new competition, we are adding several prizes to current categories. From now on, juries will recognise not only the educational potential of documentaries but also their filmmaking and artistic impact. By doing so, our goal is to support documentary filmmaking in all its aspects and appreciate its diversity. We would also like to directly support new filmmakers in the documentary genre, so a new part of AFO60 will be a competition of documentarians’ first and second (mid-length and feature) films.

Capping the non-competition section will be the Field. Via film screenings, lectures, and workshops, we will explore the theme of constructing the truth in documentary films and in science. We would also like to celebrate the festival’s 60th jubilee by a selection of films from each decade of its existence by screening documentaries one decade per day over the six days of the festival. In the lifestyle section Beer Culture, we will find out how much more there is to our national beverage than mere imbibing – beer influences our culture, societal norms, agriculture, and economy.