The South East European Film Festival (SEEFest) has revealed its 2026 program, set to open on April 29 in Los Angeles with Romanian director Ioana Mischie’s feature debut Catane. The 21st edition runs through May 6, showcasing fiction and nonfiction films from Southeast Europe. Highlights include award-winning entries like Fantasy from Slovenia and Georgia’s Oscar submission Panopticon.
The festival, founded in 2006 by journalist Vera Mijojlić from Sarajevo, brings Southeast and Eastern European cinema to U.S. audiences. It is co-presented by the ELMA foundation and has Bulgarian American actress Irina Maleeva, known for films with Fellini and Orson Welles, as its honorary chair. SEEfest runs from April 29 to May 6 in Los Angeles and includes awards in seven categories plus an industry program with a project accelerator for filmmakers. Catane, a comedy-romance described as a modern-day fairytale about bureaucrats in a Romanian village, kicks off the event. The narrative features villagers facing an inquiry into their disability benefits, leading to ingenuity and communal resilience. Key fiction films include Croatia’s Honey Bunny by Igor Jelinović, a study of family dynamics; Slovenia’s Fantasy by Kukla, which won awards at the Trieste and Slovene festivals and explores gender and self-discovery; and Georgia’s Panopticon by George Sikharulidze, the country’s Oscar entry about a young man’s struggles post-Soviet. Other notables are Slovakia’s gangster duo Miki and Černák by Jakub Kroner, Serbia’s Our Father by Goran Stanković, which premiered at TIFF, and Slovakia’s Father by Tereza Nvotová from Venice. Documentaries cover war’s impact, such as Ukraine’s Militantropos by Alina Gorlova, Simon Mozgovyi, and Yelizaveta Smit, a Cannes selection; Kosovo-Swiss The Beauty Of The Donkey by Dea Gjinovci; and Albania’s A State Film by Roland Sejko using propaganda archives. The lineup also features shorts in fiction, docs, and animation from various countries.
