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BARQ Festival claims other ways of inhabiting the world
The international architectural film festival celebrates its fifth edition in Barcelona from November 3 to 8 with seven feature films and nine short films that question the ways we live and relate to our environment.
Architecture is not just a matter of forms, structures and buildings. It is also a way of defining how we live, how we relate and what bond we establish with the spaces we share. From this perspective, the BARQ Festival returns to Barcelona with a fifth edition that, from 3 to 8 November 2026, proposes a critical look at contemporary living models. Coinciding with the designation of Barcelona as World Capital of Architecture, the event consolidates its position as the only international architecture film festival in Spain.
Under the motto "Living in a different way", the program positions documentary cinema as a tool for rethinking the relationships between people, architecture and territory. The proposal moves away from the monumental vision of architecture to delve into everyday realities, urban problems and social transformations that determine the way we occupy spaces. The selected films invite us to observe what often falls outside the conventional architectural narrative and to question the logics that have shaped our cities.
The Lions by the River Tigris, dir. Zaradasht Ahmed, Iraq.
The fragility of architectural heritage, exemplified in the uniqueness of Casa Gomis, neighborhood demands, new forms of community and ecological challenges are some of the thematic areas of this edition. An audiovisual journey that understands architecture as a discipline closely linked to collective life and the conflicts of the present.
Pep Martín, director of the BARQ Festival, claims precisely this social dimension of architecture and the need to place people at the center of the debate. In a year in which Barcelona becomes an international reference for architectural reflection, the festival wants to take advantage of the power of non-fiction cinema to go beyond the building as an object and imagine other ways of relating to our environment.
The fifth edition presents a selection of seven feature films and nine short films, which will be screened at Cinemes Girona and the DHub in Barcelona. A program that expands the festival's usual activity and is part of the Barcelona 2026 World Capital of Architecture agenda, with several initiatives deployed throughout the year.
The BARQ 2026 tour will continue in Madrid on December 2, with a special session dedicated to the screening of this edition's winning film. In this way, the festival extends its gaze beyond Barcelona and keeps open a necessary conversation about architecture, sustainability and the multiple ways of inhabiting the world.
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