Cinema of Disobedience is an international collective of filmmakers that came into being in opposition to market-first logic, conservative funding structures, and the expectation that cinema must be simplified to be sellable.
Our Story:
Cinema of Disobedience began at the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) in 2025. We met there as filmmakers and artists who, despite different backgrounds and practices, shared the same feeling. The film industry was reaching a breaking point. Markets were becoming unbearable, narrowing what could be made, shown, or even imagined.
In that moment we decided to join forces, as we are stronger together than alone. From this decision, the first ideas of the manifesto emerged.
As the writing continued, the group expanded. Cinema of Disobedience became international and diverse, shaped by multiple geographies, identities, and cinematic languages. This expansion was not strategic but necessary! The project could only exist if it reflected difference rather than consensus.
Alongside the manifesto, we chose to include personal statements. We did this because our diversity cannot be reduced to a single message, logline, or sales pitch. Each voice carries its own contradictions, histories, and positions. Together, they form a shared refusal to let cinema be flattened into something easily marketable.
Radical Queer Cinema:
We understand queerness not only as representation, but as a method. A way of thinking, editing, structuring, and producing cinema that disrupts norms and opens new possibilities for meaning.
Cinema of Disobedience is both a declaration and a practice. It is committed to building alternative audiences, ethical frameworks, and spaces where radical cinema can exist on its own terms, and not be constrained, put into boxes, or tokenized.