The first Calgary International Film Festival (CIFF) was held in 2000 for six days, and was attended by 8,000 people. Within three years, attendance had more than doubled to over 20,000 for the expanded 10-day festival.

The 11-day showcase of 179 multi-genre feature and short films from Canada and around the world also hosts a Behind the Screen series that emphasizes unique and exciting ways for filmmakers and fans to interact. For the first time, our virtual cinema program will be available for audiences across Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

With steady growth over the past four years, in 2019 attendance hit over 35,000 attendees, our third-highest attendance in the festival's twenty-one-year history.

Calgary International Film Festival is now the largest film festival in Alberta and is the sixth-largest in Canada. It is also an Oscar-qualifying festival for short films, a Canadian Screen Award Qualifying festival, and was named one of "50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee" in 2009, 2016, 2017 & 2019 by MovieMaker Magazine.

In addition to Calgary International Film Festival, we present three-film series year-round: MoS Docs, a series dedicated to showcasing the year's most talked and compelling music documentaries from around the world, Top Docs, a six-month screening series of award-winning and critically acclaimed documentary film and our third series introduced this year, Global Perspectives, a new contemporary world cinema series. We also host an Oscar-Nominated Shorts Weekend every February.

Address

Contact

Ben Tsui
Telephone: (403) 209-4958
Email: extremecam@shaw.ca
Website: hhttps://www.ciffcalgary.ca/