Sprouts Film Festival 2026
For five editions, Sprouts Film Festival has developed into a recurring platform for fictional ecocinema and socially critical debut films. It has steadily grown into an interdisciplinary film festival, now present across six venues in three of Amsterdam’s city districts: Studio/K, Kriterion, De Uitkijk, Droog, MidWest, and QRU.
While a five-year anniversary calls for celebration, each day we are reminded of the need for a festival like Sprouts. Autocrats, tech bros, and far-right factions continue to wreak havoc on our planet, disrupting ecosystems and undermining international law and human dignity. This is why Sprouts cherishes it's makers for the 2026 edition so deeply: they defy systems to share bold, uncompromising visions. Sprouts support's the shaping of a new generation of green storytellers by hosting the very first Sprouts Eco Shorts Pitch and Industry Day.
From 1 - 7 June, let's focus on bringing people together and inspiring one another to resist. Whether by visiting the free Eco Expo, joining the community dinners, attending outdoor screenings, supporting the fundraiser for Sudan, or simply watching a film together. For more information on the festival and the full programme, visit https://sproutsfilmfestival.com/ and follow us on Instagram @sproutsfilmfestival
About the festival
Everyday our lives are flooded by crises, not least of all a seemingly ever-growing climate crisis. It is therefore no surprise that Dutch society has seen a proliferation of protests. Sprouts wants to make the cinema a site of protest by addressing these crises at hand through fiction film, because the power of the imagination can help us battle polarization and foresee effective ways of living together harmoniously with one another and the more-than-human world.
As a festival we strive towards a greener and more diverse alternative to the regular films on offer in Amsterdam. Cinema can make tangible how our current global extinction crisis is never isolated. Battling racism and xenofobia, fighting for LGBTIQ+ and women’s rights, decolonizing Europe, adressing mental health, these issues and more all intersect and find a voice at Sprouts.
French philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote of our imagination as being botanical. Like a rooted tree that can connect the sky and the earth, the real and the dreamed. At Sprouts we could not agree more. Fiction makes up our festival DNA. That many of our selected eco films are also first works attests to the importance felt by a new generation of filmmakers to better take care of what we have. Sprouts wishes to nurture these brave trailblazers. We hope that you too will give them your full support.
Throughout the year Sprouts is dedicated to offer more. This website functions as a running archive voor fictional ecocinema in order to broaden the category, because there is more than The Day After Tomorrow (2004). Now we need it more than ever.
