Film Festivals in March

The Thessaloniki International Film Festival is the oldest film festival in the Balkans, running since 1960 when it began as Greek Film Week, and it stages its editions from a headquarters at 10 Aristotelous Square on the city's long waterfront. The 67th edition runs November 5-15, 2026, pairing international competition premieres with the Agora industry market, and the same organization runs a documentary festival each March, so the city carries film culture in two seasons. November in Thessaloniki means festival screenings by the bay, Byzantine churches between venues, and a cafe scene that treats cinema arguments as civic sport.

CPH:DOX is the largest documentary film festival in Scandinavia and one of the most important on the international non-fiction calendar. Held across Copenhagen's cinemas each March, it fills the city for around twelve days with more than 200 new documentaries, plus debates, live talks, concerts, exhibitions and an industry forum that draws film-makers and commissioners from around the world. Run since 2008 by Copenhagen Film Festivals, it has built a reputation for creative, boundary-pushing documentary rather than safe television fare, and its competitions regularly host world premieres. For a traveler it is a chance to watch the year's most talked-about documentaries alongside the audiences and directors who made them, in a compact, walkable city at a quiet time of year. The 2025 edition drew more than 150,000 admissions.

FESPACO, the Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou, is the largest and oldest film festival in Africa, held here every two years since 1969. For a week the Burkinabe capital becomes the meeting point of African and diaspora cinema: features, documentaries and shorts screen across the city's cinemas and open-air venues, filmmakers and critics gather from across the continent, and the jury awards the Etalon de Yennenga, the Golden Stallion, named for the warrior princess of Mossi legend. The 29th edition in 2025 gave its top prize to the Burkinabe-Franco director Dani Kouyate. Around the screenings sit a market for African film, workshops for young directors, and street life along the Avenue Kwame Nkrumah. It is the single most important stage for African film, and it belongs to Ouagadougou, which built its identity around it and raised a monument to filmmakers at the city's heart.