Calgary Underground Film Festival

05/29/2026

Contest Alert 📣 Courtesy of Elevation Pictures and The TARO Group, we're giving away tickets to see TUNER when it opens in cinemas on May 29. Directed by Daniel Roher and starring Leo Woodall, the film follows a former child prodigy turned piano tuner with hyperacusis (sensitive hearing). To enter, tag a CUFF pal!

🎬 ABOUT THE FILM: TUNER 🎬
With his once-promising musical career over, he works across New York with his mentor Harry Horowitz (Academy Award-winner Dustin Hoffman), encountering a range of characters, including composition student Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), with whom he forges an unexpected connection. Niki’s safecracking work threatens his budding romance with Ruthie and pulls him into increasingly dangerous territory.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW1cRf5X8Hk

05/26/2026

CUFF Named Top 50 Film Festival by MovieMaker Magazine ♥️🥂 CUFF has made the 2026 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee List.

“A festival by film fans, for film fans, CUFF curates every moment of the fest, earning boundless loyalties from attendees who come back year after year. The team works hard to ensure packed houses, on-theme extras, and DJ sets before the movies. There’s also a famed CUFFcade featuring indie video games. In a nice touch, all filmmakers are given a free merch voucher — but some choose to remember the festival with tattoos. The fest also creates lasting memories with vouchers for a ride up the Calgary Tower and day trips to majestic Banff, in the heart of the Canadian Rockies. CUFF draws great distributors like XYZ Films, Dark Star Pictures, and Music Box Films, and is generous with travel costs and accommodations. The latest edition just wrapped, which gives you plenty of time to plan for next year’s festival — and ink." - MovieMaker Magazine

Each year, MovieMaker Magazine releases the list of Top 50 Film Festivals Worth the Entry Fee and this year CUFF has earned a spot on the coveted list from the industry publication.

Thank you MovieMaker Magazine, CUFF audiences, alumni filmmakers, industry associates, supporters and the community that makes CUFF so special. Here’s to you, CUFF Fans 🥂

05/25/2026

"CUFF is, of course, a festival where the loud, strange, grotesque, and genre-adjacent often have room to breathe. That is one of the pleasures of the festival. You can move from horror to bodily decay to absurdist comedy to something that feels like it might have crawled out of a basement no one should have opened. In that context, The Scout may not seem, at first, like the most obvious fit. But that is also why it felt necessary.

There is value in the films that jolt you. There is also value in a film that asks you to sit, look, and be patient; to pay attention to the spaces between dramatic events, where a different kind of pressure slowly gathers. In a festival filled with bodies breaking down, people spiralling out, and genre films pushing against the edge of taste and comfort, The Scout offered a different kind of unease."

Points of Review reflects on the CUFF 2026 Selection THE SCOUT. Hit the link to read the interview with director Paula González-Nasser.

The Scout is not really about the mechanics of location scouting, even though it pays close attention to them. It is about...

05/24/2026

CUFF PICK: THE LIBRARIANS 🎬 The CUFF.Docs 2025 award-winning doc The Librarians Film has recently been added to Kanopy. Stream for free with your Calgary Public Library account.

New this week!

HIGH AND LOW (1963) Toshiro Mifune is unforgettable as Kingo Gondo, a wealthy industrialist whose family becomes the target of a cold-blooded kidnapper in the highly influential domestic drama and police procedural from director Akira Kurosawa. https://bit.ly/4dwmof7 🇺🇸|🇨🇦

ROSEMEAD (1925) Inspired by a harrowing true story, Lucy Liu transforms in a riveting, career-redefining performance as an ailing woman who takes drastic measures to protect her troubled teenage son. https://bit.ly/4uj1BTz Available: 🇺🇸|🇨🇦

THE LIBRARIANS (2025) Despite facing harassment, threats, and laws aimed at criminalizing their work - the librarians' rallying cry for freedom to read is a chilling cautionary tale in this acclaimed documentary by director Kim A. Snyder. https://bit.ly/4v0jV3U 🇺🇸|🇨🇦

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (2025) Thirteen American colonies unite in rebellion, win an eight-year war to secure their independence, and establish a new form of government that would inspire democratic movements at home and around the globe in this documentary series by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein & David Schmidt. https://bit.ly/4dwmovD Available: 🇺🇸|🇨🇦|🇦🇺|🇬🇧

BARBER (2023) A private investigator (Aidan Gillen) exposes dark secrets and corruption in Dublin after a wealthy widow's granddaughter goes missing. https://bit.ly/4v0nvuK Available: 🇺🇸

05/23/2026

Contest Alert 📣 From Amazon MGM Studios, Amazon MGM Studios Canada & The TARO Group, enter the contest to win a pair of tickets to the advance screening of Masters of the Universe on June 1, 7pm at Cineplex Chinook. To enter, tag a CUFF pal that loves a good adventure film!

🎬 ABOUT THE FILM 🎬
In MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE, Director Travis Knight brings the legendary franchise back to the big screen in this epic live-action adventure. The Sword of Power leads Prince Adam (Nicholas Galatzine) back to Eternia, a world shattered under the fiendish rule of Skeletor (Jared Leto). Joining forces with Teela (Camila Mendes) and Man-At-Arms (Idris Elba), Adam must embrace his true destiny as He-Man -- the most powerful man in the universe.
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmEx7wQI6RY

opens theatrically June 5. Contest for June 1 advance screening tickets closes May 27.

05/23/2026

Happy Dog Days, Calgary! 🌭❤️ For all you hot dog enthusiasts, today, Calgary’s first-ever hot dog festival kicks off! From May 23 to June 6, 45+ Calgary restaurants are offering special hot dog creations for “Dog Days” with $1 from every hot dog sold going to charity. So while you’ll have to wait until November for the CUFF Dog to be back at Globe Cinema for CUFF.Docs (Nov 18-22), over the next 2 weeks, you can chow down on all the glizzies your stomach can handle at 45+ restaurants across Calgary.

Comment with where you find the best dog! Though, as Nenshi says, we all know it’s at Globe Cinema for CUFF!

05/23/2026

The Calgary Black Film Festival - CBFF takes place this weekend at Globe Cinema. A shorts pack is one of the best ways to get the vibe of the fest. See the narrative shorts Saturday at 1pm or check out another film! Schedule info 🎬 calgaryblackfilm.com/the-schedule-2026

05/22/2026

CUFF PICK: I LOVE BOOSTERS 🎬 After the International Premiere at CUFF, the 2026 Closing Night Film is in cinemas now. From CUFF favourite Boots Riley, the comedy tells the story of professional shoplifters that take aim at a cutthroat fashion maven. From Elevation Pictures, I LOVE BOOSTERS is playing theatrically starting today. Drop a heart to help spread the word 🧡

05/22/2026

CUFF PICK 🎬 See the 2016 CUFF retro selection from CUFF fav Richard Linklater, at The GRAND with drinks and food from our partners at '88!