The RAI Film Festival is a biennial international event celebrating the best in documentary filmmaking from around the globe. Established in 1985 by the Royal Anthropological Institute (UK), the RAI Film Festival showcases new work from academic anthropologists and related disciplines from all levels of experience from students to professionals. It looks for fearless films that ask difficult questions, build bridges, seek redress and promote social justice and dialogue.
Our strength lies in providing a leading showcase for the best in groundbreaking and innovative anthropological documentary filmmaking from around the world. Our mission is to support the role of film within anthropology, to champion the work of filmmakers and foster a thriving and inclusive community. We feature filmmakers who find creative ways to explore our shared humanity to shine a light on people, places and stories that are too often lost in the spotlight of global media.
The RAI Film Festival runs a series of competitive awards to celebrate filmmakers of cutting-edge documentaries while also offering an inclusive and nurturing environment to actively encourage and mentor first-time and student filmmakers. It also seeks to push at the established conventions of documentary film to explore new, creative and multimodal approaches to form, narrative, collaboration and reflexivity in filmmaking.
With the support of leading academic partners from major international universities, we offer workshops, masterclasses, a conference, work-in-progress sessions, and retrospectives. We aim to maximize discovery and discussion around films and other multimodal productions from an anthropological, artistic, historical, and educational point of view.
We are pleased to work in partnership with The British Forum for Ethnomusicology (BFE) on the Ethnomusicology Film Prize. The BFE aims to advance the study of musical life in its full richness and diversity. It provides a forum for sharing research through conferences and study days and the publication of the journal "Ethnomusicology Forum".
The 2021 and 2023 editions of the RAI Film Festival are archived here: https://festival.raifilm.org.uk/
This time our festival will take place both in person from 27-30 March 2025 at the Watershed Cinema and the Arnolfini Arts Centre and Gallery in Bristol, UK- an official UNESCO City of Film. After this our festival films will be available for streaming throughout the month of April 2025.
The RAI Festival assigns 4 prizes and 4 awards: RAI Film Prize; RAI Short Film Prize; Basil Wright Prize; Wiley Blackwell Student Prize; Audience Prize; Lifetime Achievement Award, President’s Award, Richard Werbner Award for Visual Ethnography and the Ethnomusicology Film Award.
Read about them and past winners here: https://raifilm.org.uk/prizes/