The Tirana International Film Festival (TIFF) will return for its 24th edition from September 21 to 27. This year, the festival will explore one of the oldest and most challenging questions of our time: What does it mean to be human today?

The question may seem simple because we often believe we already know the answer. However, modern life continues to change how we understand ourselves and others. Today, people can reduce their identity to a social media profile, conduct relationships through screens and define reality through what a camera captures.

TIFF 2026 puts this challenge at the heart of its program. Its theme, “HUMANOGRAPHY – Bring it back,” asks audiences to look again at what connects us: human emotion.

The festival will explore dignity, memory, identity, love, fear, desire, belonging and our need to see and understand one another.

Instead of offering simple answers, the films will encourage audiences to ask difficult questions.

Cinema has always shaped the way we see reality. A film may appear to show the world as it is, but every filmmaker also presents a particular point of view.

What do we see? What do we miss? And, most importantly, whose reality do we see on screen?

TIFF 2026 draws on these questions to examine a world that has become increasingly fragmented. From the humanist ideas that once sought to overcome social, religious and geographical divisions to today’s divided societies, the festival wants to bring one thing back into focus: the human being.

The theme also guides the festival’s film program. Albanian and international filmmakers will present stories about personal experiences, conflicts, identities, relationships and difficult choices.

These films will not simply tell stories. They will challenge audiences to reflect on their own experiences and perspectives.

Cinema can act as a window through which we observe other people. At the same time, it can work as a mirror that forces us to look at ourselves.

For seven days, Tirana will welcome Albanian and international filmmakers and audiences. The festival will offer film screenings as well as masterclasses, exhibitions, workshops, industry events and special programs.

Millennium Cinema, Kino Piramida, Agimi Art Center, Vila 31 × Art Explora and Tunel Terrace will host several of the festival’s activities.

Yet TIFF 2026 wants to go beyond the question of how cinema represents reality. It also asks audiences to consider how far people have moved away from their own humanity.

“Bring it back” therefore works as more than a festival slogan. It becomes a call to put people back where they belong: at the center.

Before we discuss technology, images, identities or new ways of telling stories, one question remains:

What does it mean to be human today?

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