OPEN CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS TO
THE 2025 PSYCHEDELIC FILM FESTIVAL
The Psychedelic Film and Music Festival proudly accepts entries on FilmFreeway, the world's #1 way to enter film festivals and creative contests.
December 27, 2024
Opening Date
March 1, 2025
Earlybird Deadline
June 20, 2025
Regular Deadline
July 16, 2025
Late Deadline
August 10, 2025
Extended Deadline
August 13, 2025
Notification Date
September 13 – 14, 2025
Event Date
Congratulations to the Winners of the 2024 Psychedelic Film and Music Festival!
Best Psychedelic/ Magical Realism Feature YELLOW MARGARINE
Best Feature Documentary LIFE AND BREATH
Best Psychedelic Horror Short THE AESTHETE
Best Psychedelic Short CIRCOLOGY
Best Animation DEMI-DEMONS
Best Psychedelic Music Video ] LEAF MAN
Best Short Documentary LIMINAL SPACE-DIVING WITHIN
Best Psychedelic Song CLYDE MEETS THE ALIENS
Best Screenplay DELIRIUM- HAVE YOUR HEARD THE NEW DRUG IN TOWN?
Breaking Out
Director David Glass
United States, 6 min
Breaking Out” is centered around a tumultuous piano improvisation David Glass recorded several years ago. The short film is a psychological rollercoaster containing a variety of footage that express a wide range of intense emotions and strong forces of nature, and yet there is a beauty to the chaos. As in a ballet, the music is in synchronicity with the dramatic
The Sun is Always Shining
Director Claudia Bicen
United States, 3 min
The Sun is Always Shining is a short hand-drawn animation where Dr Dan Brown, Tibetan Buddhist scholar and Harvard clinical psychologist, discusses the nature of awareness and self.
Form
Director Adam Stone
US, 3 min
A poem film about physical and spiritual transmutation, crafted with archival footage, family photos, and found photos
Et Ignis Involvens
Director Joao Pedro Oliveira
Portugal, 11 min
This video is inspired on the first vision of the prophet Ezechiel (Ezechiel 1:4):
“And I looked, and behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself; and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire”
Les Bêtes
Director Michael Granberry
United States, 12 min
A mysterious rabbit with a set of magic keys summons a host of strange creatures to entertain a wicked king and his decadent court in this dark stop-motion animated fantasy inspired by the works of Ladislas Starevich
The Dissolution of the Landscape
Director Anne-Marie Bouchard
Canada, 22 min
Through visual metaphors, the film offers an incursion into an inner landscape, a dive into subconscious, a mix of childhood memories and recurrent dreams, between surrealism and automatism.
Can We Really Know Anything About Carrots?
Director Scott Bateman
United States. 5 min
An artificial intelligence asks the Big Questions in this animated film featuring AI-generated art, script, music, and narration.
Mamaicha, Pretty Much
Director Noah Frech
Germany, 7 min
"A lover's dance weaves through a kaleidoscope of dreams where fate unfolds in shifting, spectral visions."
Profane Riddles
Director Nick Didkovsky
United States. 4 min
Tiles of images taken from obsessively micro-detailed art are arranged in concentric patterns that seem to crawl. Enigmatically embroidered electric guitar provides the music.
Elegy in Light
Director Zareh Tjeknavorian
Armenia, 11 min
Elegy in Light", shot on super 8mm film at the funeral of Catholicos Vazgen I, Supreme Patriarch of All Armenians, depicts an ancient and rarely seen rite of the Armenian Church with the sound of monastic ritual chant: an experience described by one viewer as "a psychedelic trip into medieval times."
Mariposas
Director Adrian Carey
United States, 3 min
Set in a universe of magical realism, a boastful father prattles on superficially about his daughter to another parent in the school pick up line, but is unable to perceive her when it matters most.
Demi-Demons
Director Martin Gerigk
Germany, 18min
Demi-Demons is an essay film about the contradictions of contemporary existence, which separate us from our natural instincts, opening abysses within us. The glorification of the hermaphrodite, the hedonism of virtual realities, the search for new levels of physical attraction and forms of higher consciousness, ambivalence towards sexual reproduction, these abysses embody the existential struggles inherent in navigating the terrain between instinct and enlightenment in a rapidly evolving world
The Time Sentinel, 2024
Director Aldo Romero
US, 4 min
An ex-marine suffering from PTSD comes to believe when he becomes a time-
traveling superhero when he dreams.
2pm-4pm
Screening at the Grand Theater
Feature Documentary
AYAHUASCA NOW
Ayahuasca Now
Director Carlos Cejas
Producer Mario Jorge Stecher
Argentina, 90 min
Ayahuasca now is a powerful documentary about a group of men and women veterans from the Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan wars.Feeling trapped by their suffering and misunderstood by those around them, they embark on a journey to the Amazon jungle in search of one last chance at redemption Just voices of a silent war.
Q@A After the Screening
Screening at the Grand Theater
4pm-5pm
FEATURE PLAY
TIMOTHY X’s JOURNEY FROM PTSD TO WHOLENESS
Please RSVP for this Performance
Timothy X’s Journey from PTSD To Wholeness
Director/ Writer Dan Abella
This play is a reenactment of a session with a Afghanistan war veteran. The play explores the nature of PTSD and Survivor’s guilt
Screening at the Crown Theater
1pm-3pm
Psychedelic Feature Presentation
YELLOW MARGARINE
Yellow Margarine
Director Ryoto Akaike
Japan, 100 min
The film is about 10 characters who are "someone/something like" (who are something like a nerd, something like a girlfriend, something like an action hero, something like a yakuza and so on), exploring themselves in the interaction with each others in the imaginary small town.It describes their uniqueness, loneliness, struggles, affection
Screening at The Grand Theater and the Crown Theater
Documentary Presentation
LIFE AND BREATH
The Crown Theater/ 3pm-5pm
The Grand Theater/ 5pm-7pm
Life and Breath
Director Mustapha Khan
US, 75 min
A new documentary exploring Holotropic Breathwork, LIFE AND BREATH takes us into an extraordinary group Breathwork session in Vermont, where an eclectic collection of scholars, artists and dreamers are instructed to simply: "Breathe until you are surprised.
Q@A with Director and Participants in Both Shows
Screening at the Grand Theater
7pm-830pm
Short Film Screening Block
THE SEARCH FOR TRANSCENDENCE
Liminal Space: Diving Within
Director Anahita Safarnejad Choobary
Germany, 20 min
A poetic exploration of a father-daughter relationship. Anahita grows up in front of her father's camera. A dreamy life fulfilled with love and poetry evolves into a nightmare in which she witnesses her identity get lost as her father dies of cancer. In her quest to understand death, she dives into a rollercoaster ride of unknown emotions and embarks on a voyage of acceptance. From death into an immortal world.
TV Madness/ Song
Writer Michael Bohacz
United States, 3 min
This Moment in Time /Song
Submitter Tom Ryan
United States, 4 min
Chromatic Symphony
Director Hüseyin Mert Erverdi
Turkey, 2 min
In Chromatic Symphony (2023), the colors embark on a journey, seeking to illuminate the world and fill it with their vibrant presence. Meanwhile, the enigmatic black forms, dance and weave through the canvas. The chase between the colors and darkness unfolds in a series of rapidly cut,
Money, Fascism, and some sort of Acid
Director Janek Ambros
United States, 30 min
A collection of five short films tackling the military industrial complex, the rise of fascism, political polarization and various issues in modern society.
Clockwork Fold
Director Malte F Bartels
Germany, 2 min
Music: The minimalistic track "Clockwork" by The Careless Responders
Video: The analog Film FOLD by Malte Bartels, showing a paper boat being folded
Fixing a Hole #2
Director Pierre Ajavon
France, 6 min
By trying to fix a hole to stop our mind from wandering on the other side…
“Fixing a Hole” uses my own lunar films mixed with an experimental electronic music composition including NASA lunar sound recordings.
Magic Mushroom
Directors Jiaxun Xie, Bo Wang
United States, 10 min
Jayce, a young man, shares a dwelling with his landlord. A sexual encounter, coupled with psychedelic drugs, immerses the viewer into alternative worlds of fragmented memory. Suddenly engulfed in panic, Jayce runs for his life, trying to find his way back home
Q@A After the Screening
Screening at the Grand Theater
830pm-10pm
Short Film Screening Block
THE FANTASTICAL, THE SURREAL, THE BIZARRE
Mombomb, part 1
Director Patricia Beckmann Wells
United States, 5 min
Pez sees life through fairy tales while serial killers hunt her. Mombomb explores intergenerational trauma and memory through the eyes of the daughter of WWII immigrants
Crazy Crabs from Outer Space
Director Magdaleena Jakkila
Finland, 22 min
Pirjo, still stuck in her past, gets kidnapped by her pet crab Sebastian who turns out to be an alien. Sebastian wants to save her since the world is about to end at 10 o’clock today. However, Pirjo refuses to leave the planet without a memento of her beloved Ester and Sebastian won’t leave without Pirjo. The clock is ticking.
The Aesthete
Directors Kaylan Jordan-Sen, Ian Sen
United Kingdom, 20 min
The Aesthete is a psychedelic horror film with a sting in its tail. Horror elements aside, it deals with themes of dangerous art, drug use, manipulation, the nature of loneliness and alienation as experienced by the outsider, the things we will believe when truly desperate...and the possibility, perhaps, of transcendence.
Routine
Director Russ Emanuel
United States, 3 min
During a mysterious pandemic, Cassie’s quarantine life has turned into a routine, day in and day out. Nothing new seems to happen, until she realizes she’s out of coffee. And she’s determined to get her cup of joe, even if she must face the horrors of the outside world. Because “she’d kill for a cup of coffee.”
Leaf Man
Director Kevin Ackley
United States, 20 min
Leaf Man is a metaphysical monster movie following a man's odyssey through a world of organic existential transformations. With momentum from a powerful shoegaze score, this wordless short film uses surreal and strange dual-roled characters to dance through the boundary between ourselves, our surroundings, and each other, in the search for a meaningful life
Bay for Blood
Director Harry Waldman
United States, 18 min
James and Rob are hiding out in isolation to fix their mutual issues. As time progresses, the two reveal facts regarding their disturbing past relationship. An acquaintance of James', Jessica, finds herself in an uncomfortable position as she contemplates the best way to handle the situation.
The Double Room
Director Martin Del Carpio
United States, 15 min
Honor, both an artist and dreamer, finds himself in a dystopian reality of the corporate world. Having to face himself, his choice remains in whether to give in for the sake of survival or exist independently from what our culture has conditioned us to accept.
Circology
Director Tero Peltoniemi
Finland, 10 min
Set in a universe of magical realism, a boastful father prattles on superficially about his daughter to another parent in the school pick up line, but is unable to perceive her when it matters most.
Feedback
Director Xavier Coleman
United States, 15 min
Desperate for a respite from the city and his computer screen, NYC transplant, Evan, sets out on a camping getaway with encouragement from his AI therapist. He soon meets the campground’s renter, Sydney. With her guidance, the two decide to indulge in a rare strain of psychedelic mushrooms. What begins as an escapist meet-cute slowly devolves into a visceral nightmare, as the boundaries between the virtual and the physical begin to melt.
Player One Ready
Director Stefanie Clare Neal
Australia, 5 min
It explores the concept of simulated reality through a narrative journey, beginning with a lullaby that embodies blissful ignorance - subtly disrupted by audio-visual ‘glitches’ hinting at a deeper truth.
Q@A After the Screening
Begun in 2018 by visionary ethnopharmacologist, Dr. Dennis McKenna, the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy explores modern and traditional practices, ideas, and technologies that foster the understanding of nature, consciousness, the cosmos, and their interweavings with humanity. Those who are interested please click on the link above.
HELP US SUPPORT OUR VETS
We have an ongoing fundraising drive to support our vets through our fundraising drive for the Wounded Warrior Project
PAST PSYCHEDELIC FESTIVAL INTERVIEWS AND SHOWS
Live interview with Love Ghost- Sunday, June 13, 2021
Live interview with Johnnie Lee, vocalist for Miss Lava. Sunday, June 13,2021
Live interview with DAWN.w Friday, June 11, 2021
Below are the answers to some questions for Acid Mothers Temple and Melting Paraiso UFO. Speaking are Makoto ( lead guitarist ), Hiroshi ( keyboardist) and Jyonson Tsu. This is an audio file.
Catch our interview with Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell, M.D. on PTSD this Tuesday, June 8 at 3 PM EDT, on YouTube.
Catch a live version of the hit “The Great Divide” monster hit from Miss Lava at the festival
Love Ghost will be performing their hit “Closure” live at our festival
PSYCHEDELIC FESTIVAL GUEST: EDGAR PERA
Edgar Pera is considered by many "the most persistently individualistic Portuguese filmmaker". He has done more than one hundred films for cinema, TV, theatre dance, cine-concerts, galleries, the internet, and other media. In his movie Manual of Evasion, he invited three major counterculture American writers: Terence McKenna, Robert Anton Wilson and Rudy Rucker and asked them about the nature of time. In Paris he wins the Pasolini Award for his career, along with Alejandro Jodorowsky and Fernando Arrabal
PSYCHEDELIC FESTIVAL GUEST- DENNIS MCKENNA
My guest is noted author, ethnopharmacologist, and speaker Dennis McKenna. Some of the topics we will cover include: are we on the cusp of a psychedelic renaissance? do psychedelics and capitalism mix? what is new in psychedelic research and how can we find sanity of mind in the midst of this pan
PSYCHEDELIC FILM FESTIVAL GUEST: FREDERICK MARX
Frederick Marx is a producer, director, writer, and editor with 35 years in the film business, most of them as an independent filmmaker. Frederick is best known as the Producer/Editor of Hoop Dreams. Hoop Dreams played in hundreds of theatres nationwide after winning the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival and was the first documentary ever chosen to close the New York Film Festival. Richard is now working helping Veterans through his parent company Warrior Films.
Our Mission
The Psychedelic Film and Music Festival is an exploration of altered states of consciousness achieved thru psychedelics, film, music, art, virtual reality, and other mediums. We accept films short and features that cover non-ordinary reality experiences and altered states of consciousness. As they say. All roads lead to the One, so we are open to all kinds of psychedelic films and music
The films should come from all niches drama, surrealism, sci-fi, horror, experimental, fantastic, bizarre, shamanism, psychic archaeology, etc.
We are looking for cutting-edge documentaries on DMT. Ayahuasca, and other mind-altering substances. We are looking also for live music events bands, trance work, virtual reality installations that create the psychedelic experience and transpersonal reality.
Denis McKenna at the 2018 Psychedelic Film and Music Festival
An event with Dennis and Robert at our festival 2018
