FIFAAC (International Festival of Architecture and Constructive Adventures), run by the association of the same name, took over from Fifarc, which was part of the Sigma cultural festival (Bordeaux from 1965 to 1996). The emphasis on “constructive adventures” illustrates the organisers' desire to go beyond architecture films alone by scheduling short and feature films in which “those who film the discipline highlight it, particularly through fiction films that are more closely linked to the world of cinema than documentaries alone would be,” explains Isabelle Ducos, president of the association. For its tenth anniversary, three events were held. From 26 to 28 September, during European Heritage Days, screenings for all ages on the theme of water were organised in a mobile cinema, a truck parked on the Simone Veil bridge – the first event programme on the infrastructure. The international competition took place from 3 to 5 October at the La Lanterne cinema in Bègles, followed by screenings and debates on everyday architecture for the Journées Nationales de l’Architecture.

The competition itself is organised on the basis of a pre-selection of animated films, short and feature-length movies, made by members of the association – notably Dominique Noël, Bruno Gerbier and Jean-Marie Bertineau. The sources – movies less than two years old – come from spontaneous submissions by directors and distributors and from scouting, particularly at the Biarritz International Documentary Film Festival. This initial “ filter aims to move away from long monographs on architects and focus on screenings that highlight political commitment and the power of the collective,” says Isabelle Ducos.

The jury for the 2025 edition was chaired by architect and filmmaker Karina Dana, alongside architecture critic and author Emmanuelle Borne, filmmaker Damien Faure, and Xavier Clarke de Dromantin, heritage and architecture inspector for the French Ministry of Culture. The four members spent two days in darkened cinemas, comparing their sensibilities and debating to develop a common understanding of what cinema can say about inhabited space. As Karine Dana explains, "an architectural film works as such when I feel like a spectator-inhabitant. I expect the director's eye to be that of an “architect” in the construction of the shots and the great attention paid to those being filmed, as well as to the places. Finally, an architectural film must also withstand projection in order to last, the next day and the days after, continuing like an inner film.”

The award-winning films highlight this sensitivity. For example, Et si le soleil plongeait dans l’océan des nuages (Wissam Charaf, France-Lebanon, 2023, 20 mins), winner of the short film category, featured Raed, a construction site security guard who must prevent walkers from accessing the seafront. This provides an opportunity for unusual and dreamlike encounters, whose incongruity denounces the mafia's stranglehold on a common good: access to water. “It is a very complete and poetic film, effective, with a surreal and absurd character. Its well-balanced humour plays with space, reminiscent of the cinema of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. The relationship with the frames and frontal shots expresses very well the chaos of the Mediterranean city,” explained the jury.

In the feature film category, Ouvidor (Matias Borgström, Brazil, 2023, 1h 14') received a special mention, impressing the jury with the energy that emanates from its shots and its focus on vacant buildings in metropolitan areas. The film recounts six years of occupation of a 13-storey abandoned building in Sao Paulo by 120 artists of different nationalities, which became the scene of a collective struggle combining creativity, resistance and daily tensions. ”The aim was to reveal the need to bring poetry back to the city and to inhabit it through art, highlighting the urban approach taken by the occupants,” explained the jury.

The First Prize was awarded to Forêt rouge (Laurie Lassalle, France, 2025, 1h30’) in which the Zone à Défendre of Notre-Dame des Landes is disrupted by the cancellation of the airport project. The forest becomes a battleground and a refuge for the future, where ideals and contradictions clash in the face of state repression. For the jury, "the power of the cinematic form is evident here. The director embraces architecture as a subject, not limiting it to its sole expression but giving it a protean dimension. The freedom and lightness of certain shots, during moments of tension, place us in a situation of active contemplation. The distance from the subject matter – politics, activism and aesthetics – moves away from the clichés propagated by the media."

With this biennial competition, “the film celebrates the power of art as a tool for protest and unity, while revealing the challenges faced by groups seeking recognition and freedom,” points out Isabelle Ducos, who praises “a cinema echoes the changing perspectives of a society and the evolution of territories.” Architecture and constructive adventures were certainly in the spotlight, but the landscape was not forgotten, for example with the screening of Le printemps des jardiniers (Olivier Comte, France, 2025, 52'), the story of a passionate character who works both in his own garden and in the garden designed by Gilles Clément for the Salines d'Arc-et-Senans.

Or the impact of urban planning on the history of a society, with The Flats (Alessandra Celesia, Ireland-France-Belgium, 2025, 1h54'), “a superb film from a cinematographic point of view that shows the aftermath of the conflict in Northern Ireland and the link between politics and forms of housing,” according to the president of FIFAAC.

Two other prizes were awarded in parallel: one by the Archi-V association, which chose Schindler–Space Architect (Valentina Ganeva, United States, 2024, 1h30'), a documentary devoted to the work of Rudolph M. Schindler, a pioneer of modern architecture who is relatively unknown in France. The prize awarded by specialist schools (a jury of students from the Bordeaux National School of Architecture and Landscape and CinéCréatis, a film and audiovisual school) was awarded to Et si le soleil plongeait dans l'océan des nues, mentioned above. Award-winning or honourable mention short and feature films were given a trophy designed by Eunhye Kim and Subin Park, students at the Bordeaux School of Fine Arts.

It is difficult to view films devoted to architecture outside of competitions and festivals, such as the one in Porto (Arquiteturas Film Festival, where arc en rêve was the guest institution in June 2025), Prague (Film and Architecture Festival, 1st to 6th October 2025) and Rotterdam (Architecture Film Festival, next edition from 7 to 11 October 2026). However, screenings in cinemas often provide an opportunity for discussions with the teams or debates. Alternatively, some films may be shown on Arte or in certain independent cinemas.