Sprouts Film Festival
ecocinema & debut films
In times of a glitching world, with weather extremes and inhumane conflicts intensifying, it can be tempting to avert your gaze. Instead, Sprouts wants to make the cinema a site for peaceful protest by showing newly released ecocinema and socially critical debut films. All selected features and shorts are fiction, because it is our belief that through the power of imagination we can alter our behaviour for the better and rethink our relationship with the more-than-human world. We are here to make you wonder, to inform, to spark resistance and to nurture fresh talent.
Sprouts Film Festival 2025 took place from April 14 to 20. Check our Sprouts On Tour events here.
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About the festival
Everyday our lives are flooded by crises, not least of all a seemingly ever-growing climate crisis. It is therefore no surprise that Dutch society has seen a proliferation of protests. Sprouts wants to make the cinema a site of protest by addressing these crises at hand through fiction film, because the power of the imagination can help us battle polarization and foresee effective ways of living together harmoniously with one another and the more-than-human world.
As a festival we strive towards a greener and more diverse alternative to the regular films on offer in Amsterdam. Cinema can make tangible how our current global extinction crisis is never isolated. Battling racism and xenofobia, fighting for LGBTIQ+ and women’s rights, decolonizing Europe, adressing mental health, these issues and more all intersect and find a voice at Sprouts.
French philosopher Gaston Bachelard wrote of our imagination as being botanical. Like a rooted tree that can connect the sky and the earth, the real and the dreamed. At Sprouts we could not agree more. Fiction makes up our festival DNA. That many of our selected eco films are also first works attests to the importance felt by a new generation of filmmakers to better take care of what we have. Sprouts wishes to nurture these brave trailblazers. We hope that you too will give them your full support.
Throughout the year Sprouts is dedicated to offer more. This website functions as a running archive voor fictional ecocinema in order to broaden the category, because there is more than The Day After Tomorrow (2004). Now we need it more than ever.
Contact & info
︎ sproutsfilmfestival@gmail.com
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Festival locations
Studio/K
Timorplein 62
Amsterdam Oost
Filmtheater Kriterion
Roetersstraat 170
Amsterdam Oost
De Uitkijk
Prinsengracht 452
Amsterdam Centrum
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Artistic Director & Film Programmer Thomas Streekstra
Managing Director & Societal Programmer Veerle van Lieshout
Cultural Programmer Sarah Saleh
Graphic Designer & Marketeer Ella Gijselhart
Public Relations Emma Broholm
Print Traffic Fenna van Halsema
Financial Advisor Tiemen van Stempvoort
Film Previewer Tamar El Dahr
Board
President Elin Boijens
Secretary René Wolf
Treasurer Jeroen Groot
KvK 92198600 - Stichting Sprouts Film Festival
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Managing Director & Societal Programmer Veerle van Lieshout
Cultural Programmer Sarah Saleh
Graphic Designer & Marketeer Ella Gijselhart
Public Relations Emma Broholm
Print Traffic Fenna van Halsema
Financial Advisor Tiemen van Stempvoort
Film Previewer Tamar El Dahr
Board
President Elin Boijens
Secretary René Wolf
Treasurer Jeroen Groot
KvK 92198600 - Stichting Sprouts Film Festival
