Artists:
Dalia Al Kury, Sanja Anđelković, Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan, Babu Eshwar Prasad, Anette Gellein, Abdul Hamid Mandgar, Heesoo Kwon, Cocoy Lumbao, Raffaela Naldi Rossano, Isabelle Nouzha, Elinor O’Donovan, Ahmet Rüstem Ekici & Hakan Sorar, Sin Wai Kin, Kialy Tihngang, Mykolas Valantinas, Melisa Zulberti
Partners:
Crawford Art Gallery ● Argos Centre for Audiovisual Arts ● Center Contemporary Arts Afghanistan in eXiLe ● Cultural Center of Belgrade ● Forma, London ● Fundación Proa Buenos Aires ● Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Bergamo ● Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions LACE ● MMAG Foundation in Ammam ● Project 88 Mumbai ● Sapieha Palace, branch of Contemporary Art Centre CAC ● Tramway Glasgow ● Tromsø Kunstforening,Tromsø ● Video-Forum of Neuer Berliner Kunstverein n.b.k● Istanbul Modern ● Museum of Contemporary Art and Design (MCAD) Manila ● Southwark Park Galleries, London
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Dream States – the 18th edition of Artists’ Film International is exploring dreaming as both a transformative state and a radical act, challenging perceptions of reality and opening pathways to alternative futures. The film selection offers limitless possibilities that push the boundaries of moving-image programming, showcasing radical and courageous alternatives. It presents a unique opportunity to engage with artists from all over the world and reflect on how dreaming can serve as a regenerative practice or a means of liberation for individuals and communities alike.
At the intersection of personal consciousness and external realities, Dream States explores the emancipatory potential of dreams, altered states, and cinematic illusion. The program foregrounds artists who disrupt linear time, blur fact and fiction, and navigate the boundaries between memory, myth, and fantasy to reimagine the world anew. Using an array of visual strategies, from analogue footage to CGI animation, layered archival materials, special effects, and AI-generated imagery, these works harness moving-image to destabilize dominant perspectives. Reflecting upon shared histories, the artists’ eclectic and surreal dreamscapes–utopian and dystopian, intimate and collective–position cinema as the crucible of dream-making and a vehicle for change making.
Curated by Forma with 16 cultural institutions across four continents, the edition showcases a remarkable cohort of artists, each selected or commissioned by an AFI’25 partner. Presented in diverse formats, including exhibitions, festivals, and screenings, AFI’25 unfolds across the partners’ venues throughout 2025, guiding global audiences through mythic worlds, dystopian landscapes, fractured memories, and speculative possibilities.
The Cultural Center of Belgrade will show the program of the 18th edition in 2026, and by the end of the year it will be shown the newest, 19th edition, which gathered films under the theme of Kind of Power, in the Cinema Hall of the Cultural Center of Belgrade.
The Artists’ Film International program was launched more than fifteen years ago by the Whitechapel gallery in London and the Cultural Center of Belgrade has been participating in it since 2012. From 2024, coordination was taken over by the contemporary art organization Forma from London. It is an annual program that encourages critical dialogue and collective reflection in which around 20 organizations, galleries, museums from around the world participate.
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Program coordinator and curator for Cultural Center of Belgrade is Zorana Đaković Minniti