Amsterdam Student Film Festival
The Amsterdam Student Film Festival team is pleased to announce that we will be having thesecond edition of our festival AmsFF 2025 at FC Hyena on February 4!
If this is your first time hearing about the Amsterdam Student Film Festival, allow us to introduce ourselves: AmsFF was started in 2022 by a group of 8 students who felt the lack of a space for student filmmakers to connect and showcase their work.
So, we decided to make that space ourselves. With a vision of a cinema full of students, teachers, film professionals and creatives of all kinds, coming to celebrate what students can do with little resources but a determination to turn their creative ideas into reality. And with little to no funding, we were able to achieve that very vision with AmsFF 2023, selling out all three cinema rooms in Kriterion.
Celebrating what students can do with little resources
Since then, AmsFF have been empowered by the payoff of our team’s hard work and inspired by the incredible student films. But we couldn’t have done it on our own. We were able to get collaborations with Cineville, WeArePublic, and Mubi, who provided goodies and prizes for our filmmakers, and helped to promote our festival. We also were so lucky to have five amazing film teachers/professionals on our jury, many of whom recognized the work of students they taught themselves. The crew of the film commercial, including the actors, who helped spread the word about our festival. And with the hard work of the curation team - with staff at Kriterion - who watched all of the submissions and did the hard work of deciding what was going to be screened in the final event. And of course, Kriterion Film Theater, our lovely host, who trusted us to make this festival a hit for their cinema, and were rewarded by a sold-out cinema in all three rooms.
This year we are switching up the programming to be centered around connecting filmmakers, showcasing their work, and providing feedback & awards.
At 21:00 the festival programme will begin, showcasing the wonderful student films for our audience to see. After all the films have been shown, we will hear from our lovely judges, Nduka Mntambo, Joyce Joumaa, Jap Leuven, and John Laughlin. Each judge lends their perspective to the film, as they are a mix of filmmakers, directors, visual artists, film professors, researchers and recent film graduates themselves. Instead of last year’s more hierarchical assessing, we will aim to provide feedback to help the filmmakers on their creative journey, as well as presenting each filmmaker with their prizes provided by our gracious collaborators, Mubi and Cineville. This year we are also collaborating with the incredible Subbacultcha.
After the general program is concluded, celebrations will commence! We will be having drinks and live DJs with music and dancing to send off our lovely night. It’s going to be a great time, so make sure to follow us on Instagram and check the FC Hyena’s website for the festival program and updates about future events!