+RAIN Film Festival, the first European AI film festival that stands out for its original and pioneering character promoting reflection and debate on these technologies in the audiovisual sector, opens its third call for films. Organized by Pompeu Fabra University and Sónar, +RAIN is at the forefront of contemporary film experimentation and explores the aesthetic, narrative, ethical and political implications of AI in the field of cinema and the other arts. 

The third edition of the festival seeks to consolidate its commitment and position itself once again at the centre of experimentation with AI & film from around the world, a space where new visual narratives evolve and people interested in the future of cinema can meet.

You can read the rules governing the call and submit your film at www.upf.edu/web/rainfilmfest. ​​​​​​For the exhibition of the selected films, the +RAIN Film Festival will pay a fee of €250 (gross), which also includes participation in the various activities of the Festival and the screening of the selected films at ​Sónar+D. The Festival will cover the accommodation and travel expenses of one author per project (up to a maximum amount). Two prizes will be awarded among the selected works. The jury’s decision will be final:

Best Film Award: €3,000 (gross).

Emerging Talent Award: €2,000 (gross).

The UPF created +RAIN Film Festival in 2023 to show and reflect on the avant-garde trends of contemporary cinema and audiovisuals driven by the emergence of AI. Since the beginning, the festival has enjoyed the collaboration of Sónar, which already included some of the activities of the first edition of +RAIN, held in June 2023, in the Sónar+D programme. The second edition, which took place from June 11 to 14, 2024, was already co-organized by the parties.

While the first edition discovered new audiovisual trends created with AI, the second was an important qualitative and quantitative step both in terms of increasing the programmed activities dedicated to research and innovation with AI and in terms of the number of films presented at the festival. In the second edition, in 2024, 232 films were presented at the festival, five times more than in 2023. The third edition will take place from June 10 to 13, 2025, and from December 2 to March 9, the period to submit films created with AI to the festival is open.

+RAIN Film Festival recently won the Parenthesis Award for Best Catalan Project. It is a recognition given by Parèntesi Media, a portal specialized in AI, immersiveness and the audiovisual industry based in Barcelona. As a result of Parèntesi Media’s recognition of the festival in early 2025, Frederic Guerrero, co-director of +RAIN says: “It is an award for a project that, from the beginning, has been committed to raising awareness of the potential of generative AI as a tool for audiovisual creation and, at the same time, to assess its most critical aspects, among which are ethics and the impact on the productive sector”. For Guerrero-Solé, this award is also “a stimulus to continue with this collaboration between a public university, capable of attracting academic and creative talent, and a music and technology festival with an impact and recognized worldwide prestige, as is Sónar”. “The award encourages us to continue working on a project that aspires to become a reference around the new forms of audiovisual creation with AI and the cultural, political and social debates that arise from it”, the co-director of the festival concludes.

You can follow +RAIN Film Festival on social media: @rainfilmfest