SET Film Festival returns for its fourth edition this November

Still from Where Russia Ends (2024), directed by Oleksiy Radynski, screening on Night 1. Image courtesy of the artist.
Still from Where Russia Ends (2024), directed by Oleksiy Radynski, screening on Night 1. Image courtesy of the artist.

SET is pleased to announce the return of SET Film Festival for its fourth edition this November, bringing together seven curated nights of contemporary, artist and archival film. Running from 5 November to 5 December, this year’s programme spans four short film nights, a feature-length screening, a free evening of archival film and performance, and its inaugural awards night. For the first time, one night’s programme will also be available online.

Founded in 2023 by Amina Ali, Ellie Dobbs and Verity Monroe, SET Film Festival has grown into an annual, independent grassroots platform supporting emerging voices and international filmmakers and artists whose work explores forms and perspectives beyond conventional exhibition and distribution contexts.

Held every November at SET Social, SET’s arts and social club in Peckham, the festival brings documentary, narrative, experimental and artists’ moving-image practices into dialogue through a programme of weekly screenings. Each night follows a distinct theme, tracing connections across different practices and perspectives, with selected screenings followed by Q&As with the filmmakers.

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Still from Razeh-del (2025), directed by Maryam Tafakory, screening on Night 1. Image courtesy of the artist.
Still from Razeh-del (2025), directed by Maryam Tafakory, screening on Night 1. Image courtesy of the artist.

Seven nights of film

The festival opens on Thursday 5 November with Impossible Cinema, a programme exploring the possibilities of cinema through frustrated, imaginary and improvised forms. Here, cinema emerges not as a finished object but as a site of interruption, refusal and creative ‘making-do’. Encounters with borders, bureaucracy and censorship challenge conventions of filmic completion, opening up new relationships between fiction and documentary, memory and performance, archive and invention.

The programme includes Maryam Tarfakory’s Razeh-del, which uses appropriated footage from post-revolutionary Iranian cinema to tell a story of censorship through two schoolgirls and their ‘synopsis for an impossible film’. In Jani Peltonen’s Equal Dust, footage of Helsinki at night, a NATO nuclear exercise and Finnish Eurovision lyrics converge. Basma Al-sharif’s Old Masters considers image-preservation and the role of the witness in political violence, while Oleksiy Radynski’s Where Russia Ends reconstructs an erased history of imperialism and resource extraction through rediscovered Soviet-era Ukrainian expedition footage.

Still from Trout Lake (2026), directed by Florrie James, screening on Night 2. Image courtesy of the artist.
Still from Trout Lake (2026), directed by Florrie James, screening on Night 2. Image courtesy of the artist.

Where Impossible Cinema questions the limits of the medium, the next programme finds possibility in the unpredictable. On Thursday 12 November, Plot Twist presents five films exploring the surreal, the silly and the unexpected. Playing with performance and improvisation, the programme moves between the everyday and the existential, finding humour in situations where the plot unravels and nothing goes quite to plan. From best friends on a shoplifting spree to a strangely romantic fishing trip-cum-stag do, the films embrace the absurd. A Q&A with the filmmakers, hosted by Ellie Dobbs, follows the screening.

On Thursday 19 November, A Conjuring, A Summoning turns towards the mysterious, exploring the unknowable terrains of grief, nostalgia and longing through mysticism and iconography. Through talismans and offerings, trances and spells, the films probe encounters with the divine, seeking ways to commune with the past and imagine the future. Embracing the enigmatic rather than seeking to resolve it, the programme asks what it means to place our faith in the unseen and the unknown. A Q&A with the filmmakers will follow, hosted by Amina Ali.

[Still from Corral de Tigres (2026), directed by Juan Ignacio Slobayen, screening on Night 3. Image courtesy of the artist.]
Still from Corral de Tigres (2026), directed by Juan Ignacio Slobayen, screening on Night 3. Image courtesy of the artist.

Continuing the festival’s exploration of different ways of seeing, Body Mapping marks its first online screening, taking place on Wednesday 25 November. This programme challenges the idea of corporeal and geographical borders as fixed divisions, connecting political struggles, health crises and ecological destruction as entangled conditions. Moving between intimate encounters and contested territories, the films explore how borders shape movement, belonging and relationships across human and more-than-human worlds.

From a filmmaker’s love letter to her cat to the shared scars of the Białowieża Forest, the programme traces connections between animal companionship, ecological change and the landscapes we inhabit. Another film by Emilia Beatriz draws on the concept of barrunto, an omen or bodily sensing of unrest and environmental change, to trace connections across diasporic distances, from Puerto Rico to Scotland and from Earth to Uranus. The films remain available to watch online until Saturday 5 December, with an opportunity to submit questions for an online Q&A.

Alongside its short-film programmes, the festival presents a feature-length screening and a free archival film and performance night.  The archival strand explores moving-image history through community participation and solidarity, reflecting the festival’s ongoing belief in how cinema can shift our understanding of the world and inspire change.

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Still from barrunto (2024), directed by Emilia Beatriz, screening on Night 4. Image courtesy of the artist.

Introducing the SET Film Festival Awards

The festival concludes on Saturday 5 December with its inaugural awards, recognising work across four categories: Audience Choice, Special Mention, Best Artist Film and Best Documentary. The awards mark a new chapter for the festival, creating an opportunity to celebrate filmmakers working across documentary, artists’ moving image and beyond.

The festival’s closing awards night will also feature screenings by members of SET Film Festival’s 2026 Accelerator Programme cohort, which supports UK-based filmmakers and moving-image practitioners in developing active film and video projects.

Programme and tickets

In-person screenings take place at SET Social, SET’s arts and social club in Peckham. Thursday screenings open at 6.45pm, with films starting promptly at 7.30pm and a 15-minute interval. Please check individual event listings for full details.

Tickets for in-person screenings cost £9 for general admission and £7 for concessions. The online screening on 25 November is ticketed separately at £5, while Archive Film Night is free. Every in-person ticket includes a printed programme.

Festival passes are available for £32 for one or £52 for two, covering all paid events, including the online screening. All in-person tickets include a printed programme. You don’t need to be a SET Social member to attend, and SET Social members can enjoy concession prices.

Explore the full programme and book tickets via SET Film Festival on Eventive.

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For festival enquiries, contact filmfestival@setspace.uk. For press enquiries, contact press@setspace.uk.

Supported by Goldsmiths Exhibition Hub.

Featured image: SET Film Festival 2026 poster. Design credit: Ashley Kinnard Studio.