Meet the festivals: Zlín Film Festival
The Zlín Film Festival is the oldest international festival of films for children and young audiences in the world. Held annually in Zlín, a city in the Czech Republic with a deep-rooted filmmaking tradition, it has been running since 1961 and this year celebrates its 66th edition, taking place from 28 May to 3 June 2026.
The festival’s origins are inseparable from the Zlín film studios, founded in 1936 under Jan Antonín Baťa as a production base for advertising films for the Baťa shoe empire. Over the decades, Zlín grew into the most important centre for children’s filmmaking in Czechoslovakia, home to Karel Zeman, Hermína Týrlová, Břetislav Pojar, and Oscar-winning filmmaker Alexander Hackenschmied. That legacy still runs through the festival today — in its curatorial identity, award design, and understanding of what cinema for young audiences can and should be.
Each year, the festival screens nearly 300 films from almost 50 countries, accompanied by filmmaking delegations from across the world. It serves as a natural hub for international networking in children’s and youth cinema, drawing distributors, sales agents, and festival representatives alongside the films themselves. Since 2010, overall attendance has consistently exceeded 100,000 visitors.
For the animation field specifically, the festival’s dedicated International Competition of Short Animated Films for Children and its long-running Czech Animation strand make it one of the region’s most focused platforms for animated shorts targeting young audiences. As a longstanding member of ECFA and the European Children’s Film Festival Network, Zlín sits at the centre of a professional ecosystem connecting Central European festivals, distributors, and filmmakers, while offering animated works a meaningful route to regional visibility.
Competitive sections
The festival runs several international competitions: feature films for children, pre-teens, and youth; short animated films for children; European documentaries for young audiences; and the Zlínský pes student film competition.
Awards
The main prize is the Golden Slipper (Zlatý střevíček), awarded in each main category. Additional honours include the Karel Zeman Award for visual achievement in the children’s feature category, the ECFA Doc Award for Best European Documentary for Young Audiences, and the Zlínský pes — the jury’s main prize for the best student film, which comes with a financial reward of EUR 1,000.
The 2026 edition
The 66th edition runs from 28 May to 3 June 2026.
The main competition for children’s feature films brings together titles from the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Romania, India, Egypt, Switzerland, and a Czech-Slovak co-production.
The industry programme has been relaunched under the new banner ZLINFEST PRO, featuring pitching forums, panels on AI in audiovisual creation, an international conference on children’s film festival models, film school showcases, and roundtables addressing legal and ethical questions in filmmaking.
This year’s honorary Golden Slipper goes to Hurvínek, the beloved Czech puppet character, marking 100 years since his creation.
