HARD:LINE International Film Festival

HARD:LINE International Film Festival

Also known as: HARD:LINE Film Festival
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HARD:LINE presents extreme cinema in Regensburg: horror films, thrillers and science fiction, most of them screened at least as German premieres. The festival reads “extreme” broadly, from explicit splatter to unusual storytelling or visual language, and keeps its selection small. Admission is strictly 18 and over.

HARD:LINE grew out of an earlier film series of the same name and held its first edition in 2013 at the Kinos im Andreasstadel; the Ostentor Kino has been its main venue since 2018. Audience votes decide the Golden Razor Blade for best feature and the Silver Razor Blade for best short. As a member of the Méliès International Festivals Federation, the festival also has an international jury award the Méliès d’Argent to a European fantastic short film. The dates for the 2027 edition, the 14th, are 15–21 April 2027.

Country

Germany

Focus

Horror, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Categories

Feature, Short

Dates

15 April 2027 — 21 April 2027

Awards and prizes

Golden Razor Blade: audience award for the best feature film. Silver Razor Blade: audience award for the best short film; all selected short films are eligible. Méliès d’Argent: awarded by an international jury to the best European fantastic short film on behalf of the Méliès International Festivals Federation (MIFF). The winner goes on to the Méliès d’Or competition at the Sitges festival. The audience awards carry no prize money. The opening and closing films and the older titles of the Directors Spotlight are not part of the audience vote. Eight to ten European short films screen in the Méliès competition, and six to eight further international shorts are shown out of competition.

Festival rules

HARD:LINE shows genre cinema: horror, thriller and science fiction. General rules: the film must be a fictional genre film (no documentaries); non-English films need English subtitles; films must not be older than two years and must not have been released in Germany; the submitter must hold full authority to submit the film and all rights must be cleared; high-resolution screening material is required (DCP, file or Blu-ray); films must be made by humans, AI-generated films are not accepted. Features must run 70 to 150 minutes, short films no longer than 20 minutes. Short film competition: only European productions (European team, shot in Europe or financed with European funds) compete for the Méliès d’Argent; a film that has already won a Méliès d’Argent at another Méliès festival is not eligible, while nominations do not exclude it. Non-European shorts can be selected as International Highlights out of competition. Films are submitted via FilmFreeway, Festhome or the form on the festival website. Every submitter is told whether the film was selected.

Contacts

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