The Story Behind FFS

Films from the South was born at the University of Oslo in 1991 by idealistic film enthusiasts. The dream was to show that 1 billion people in Asia, Africa and Latin America could not be wrong. In spite of the large and vital film production on these continents almost none of the production reached Norwegian cinemas.

After two years at the university, Oslo Municipal Cinemas became a new partner, and the festival was moved to the city center. In 1997 the festival's administration moved in with the rest of the Norwegian film industry to the newly opened Filmens Hus.

In 2000, Films from the South's 10th anniversary was celebrated with a film programme that was larger and more internationally prestigious than ever before.
As the first festival in Norway, we got a FIPRESCI award and hence created a new programme section called "New Directions."

Crown Prince Haakon opened the festival's 15th anniversary in 2005. One year later came another milestone, the festival introduced daytime screenings at Vika Cinema so that the audience would be able to watch films from early morning until late at night.

Films from the South is constantly growing and has more than doubled the number of visitors since the year 2000. Annually we screen around 100 films from nearly 50 countries for over 26,000 spectators. We have achieved a recognition no one had thought was possible at the beginning in 1991, but our objectives have remained unchanged: to show both the width and depth of the film production from Asia, Africa and Latin America.