Atlantic Canada 48 Hour Film Project

48 Hour Films. One Wild Weekend.

The Atlantic Canada 48 Hour Film Project is the region's wildest filmmaking bet: teams from across Atlantic Canada write, shoot, and cut a finished short film between Friday night and Sunday night — 48 hours, no extensions. In September 2026, 18 teams took that bet during the 4–6 September filmmaking weekend, and Halifax gets to see what they made: every film screens publicly over the last weekend of September, first at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and then at Carbon Arc Cinema.

It is the Atlantic Canadian edition of a competition that runs in cities around the world, which gives the local winners a road out of the province. The competition's international finale, Filmapalooza, gathers the best films from every participating city, and Atlantic Canada's top team earns its place on that stage.

From Blank Page to Premiere in One Weekend

The format is the draw. On kickoff night, each team draws a genre from a hat and receives the required elements every film must contain — a character, a prop, and a line of dialogue. After that, the clock runs. Scripts are written overnight, locations are begged and borrowed at dawn, and editing ends when the Sunday deadline hits, finished film or not.

The result is a program of shorts that runs from sharply polished to gloriously unhinged, and part of the fun of the premiere is that nobody in the audience — often including the teams' own friends — has seen any of it before the lights go down. Comedy, horror, musical, heist: the genre draw guarantees a mixed bill.

The 2026 Premiere Weekend in Halifax

Public screenings run across two days and two venues:

Saturday, September 26 — Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. All 18 films from the 2026 competition screen in one marathon program, 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., in the gallery's Windsor Foundation Lecture Theatre at 1723 Hollis Street, downtown. Expect a full house of cast, crew, and the people who fed them.

Sunday, September 27 — Carbon Arc Cinema. The weekend narrows to the best of the year. A 1:00 p.m. session presents the Best of Filmapalooza — standout shorts from the international competition — followed at 2:00 p.m. by the Best of Atlantic Canada 48 Hour Films. Carbon Arc screens in the basement of the Museum of Natural History at 1747 Summer Street, one of the city's true indie film rooms. The Sunday program closes with an awards ceremony reserved for participating filmmakers and media.

Can't make it in person? All 18 films are also available to watch online through a ticketed stream, so the premiere is effectively province-wide if your couch is more your speed.

Tickets for all screenings and the online stream are sold through Eventbrite; the Atlantic Canada page at 48hourfilm.com carries the direct links.

Making a Night of It

Both venues sit in walkable central Halifax. The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia anchors the Hollis Street gallery district, a short walk from the Halifax waterfront boardwalk — worth an hour before the doors open if the weather holds. Carbon Arc on Summer Street is beside the Halifax Public Gardens and the Spring Garden Road strip, which does a brisk pre-screening dinner trade; our Halifax dining guide has the short list.

Late September in Halifax averages daytime highs near 19°C dropping to 14°C overnight, so bring a layer for the walk between venues if you are doing the full weekend. For everything else in the city that week, the Halifax local guide covers where to stay, park, and wander between screenings.

If watching makes you want to compete rather than spectate, the competition runs every year — registration for the next edition opens on the 48 Hour Film Project's team registration page well before the September filmmaking weekend. No festival credentials required: past teams have included students, ad-agency crews, and groups of friends with one camera and a lot of coffee.