Named after the practice of clandestine dissemination of censored and forbidden texts in communist states, Samizdat Eastern European Film Festival returns for its 5th edition, bringing an ever-eclectic mix of some of the most exciting, powerful, thoughtful, weird and wonderful filmmaking from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Caucasus to audiences in Glasgow: with a jam-packed festival across Glasgow, Cromarty, Edinburgh, Dunfermline and Aberdeen.
The latest instalment of their beloved animated shorts programme, Politics of the Imagination: Animations of the Eastern Bloc (1958–1992), celebrates the interplay between the imaginative and the political in animation from the region, where formal playfulness became cover for a secret language of social and political critique.
Samizdat’s special strand this year is Re-membering the Archive: a collection of documentaries that review the past, make sense of the present, and mend the broken imaginaries of the future. The practices of working with home videos, photographs, and commercials here become a form of temporal repair.
In memoriam of director Béla Tarr, Samizdat are presenting Werckmeister Harmonies in rarely seen 35mm. Composed of just 39 long takes, the film depicts the breakdown of social order in a small, unnamed Hungarian town following the arrival of a mysterious travelling circus.
The spotlight from their genre strand, Love Stories: Eastern European and Caucasian Romance, is Levan Akin’s And Then We Danced: a stunning exploration of queer identity in modern-day Georgia, the intoxication of first love, and the fraught tensions between the responsibility to uphold tradition and the desire for freedom of expression.
Presented in collaboration with the Scottish Documentary Institute's Doc Screen initiative, Samizdat present Radu Jude and Christian Ferencz-Flatz's Eight Postcards from Utopia: a humorous, incisive, fast-paced journey through post-revolutionary Romania, told through a montage of TV advertisements.
Finishing off Samizdat’s Filmhouse run is a Halloween special: a landmark of Polish cinema, Mother Joan of the Angels – an austere religious horror that follows a priest sent to a remote 17th-century convent following reports of demonic possession.
Learn more about the programme on the Samizdat website.
Key dates for 2026
- Glasgow: 6–11 October at Glasgow Film Theatre and The Pyramid
- Cromarty: 13–16 October at Cromarty Cinema
- Edinburgh: 22–25 October at the Filmhouse
- Dunfermline: 30 October at Peacock Cinema (Carnegie Hall)
- Aberdeen: 7 November at The Belmont Cinema (Aberdeen Art Gallery)
The 2026 edition of Samizdat is supported by Screen Scotland’s Film Festival and Screening Programme Fund and Film Hub Scotland, part of the BFI’s Film Audience Network, and funded by Screen Scotland and National Lottery funding from the BFI.
More information
Image credits: Stills from The Beauty of the Donkey courtesy of Samizdat Eastern European Film Festival