You do not need a film school degree or a production company behind you or expensive equipment. All you need is a you need a camera, a story, and something to say about the world you live in.
That is the entire requirement for one of the most unique youth opportunities open right now. The PLURAL+ Youth Video Festival is run by the United Nations and it is accepting video submissions right now for its 2026 edition. Winners get their films screened at the United
What is PLURAL+?
The PLURAL+ Youth Video Festival is an initiative of the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) that invites the world’s youth to submit original and creative videos focusing on the themes of migration, diversity, social inclusion, and the prevention of xenophobia. By supporting the distribution of youth-produced media, PLURAL+ recognises youth as powerful agents of positive social change in a world often characterised by intolerance, and cultural and religious divisions.
This festival has been running for over fifteen years. It has received thousands of submissions from young filmmakers across every continent. The work that gets selected is not polished Hollywood content. It is honest, personal, creative storytelling about the real world.
If you have something to say about where you come from, who your community is, or how diversity shows up in your daily life, this festival was built for exactly that.
What Themes Can You Submit On?
The four focus areas are migration, diversity, social inclusion, and the prevention of xenophobia. Those themes are broad enough to give you serious creative freedom. A short documentary about your grandmother’s immigration story qualifies. An animated film about cultural misunderstanding qualifies. A spoken word video about growing up between two cultures qualifies. A fictional narrative about a refugee family qualifies.
The medium is also open. Live action, animation, documentary, experimental – the festival does not restrict your format. What matters is that your video engages one of the four themes with honesty and creativity.
If storytelling is your medium and you want to see what other UN-backed competitions look like in this space, the UNESCO Youth Storytelling Contest 2026 is also open right now and accepts submissions in multiple formats.
Who Can Submit?
Do you consider yourself young? Then you qualify. The festival is specifically designed for youth filmmakers and it has age categories that make it fair across different stages of creative development.
Submissions are accepted from individuals and groups. Schools, youth organisations, and community groups can submit collectively. You do not have to be a solo filmmaker to participate. The entry form is online and open right now for the 2026 edition under the hashtag #PLURALplus26. Remember there is no entry fee.
What Do You Get if You Win?
Your film gets screened at the United Nations. That is the headline benefit and it is not a small thing. The PLURAL+ ceremony brings together filmmakers, UN officials, international jury members, and media partners from around the world. Being a selected recipient means your work joins a library of films that have been distributed internationally through a network of festival and media partners.
Past partner organisations include film festivals, broadcasting networks, and media education organisations across multiple continents. Your film does not just win a certificate. It gets seen.
International jurors and partners screen selected videos from thousands of submissions worldwide. The jury has included film professionals, cultural figures, and representatives from international organisations across every edition of the festival since 2009. That level of exposure is genuinely difficult to access through any other route for a young filmmaker who is just starting out.
Most young creatives spend years trying to get their work in front of an audience that matters. PLURAL+ shortcircuits that process. It gives your work a global distribution context from the moment it is selected – UN branding, international partners, and a ceremony that gets media coverage.
For a young filmmaker in Nairobi, Accra, Lagos, or Kampala, that kind of platform is transformational. Your film competing alongside work from Europe and North America and being screened at the same level is not a small thing. It is a statement about who belongs in global conversations about the issues that matter.
The themes – migration, diversity, inclusion, xenophobia – are not abstract policy topics. They are the lived experience of millions of young people across Africa and the Global South. If you have that experience, you have something the rest of the world needs to hear.
For young people looking for other ways to engage with the UN and global platforms beyond filmmaking, the fully funded Youth Empowerment Forum in Switzerland is another active opportunity worth exploring alongside this one.
Tips for a Strong Submission
The PLURAL+ team has published guidance on how to make a strong video submission. A few things stand out consistently across successful entries.
- Keep it focused. The most powerful submissions have one clear idea at the centre, not five. Pick one story, one moment, one character, and go deep rather than broad.
- Be specific rather than general. A film about migration that follows one person’s specific journey is more compelling than a film about migration in the abstract. Specificity creates empathy.
- Sound matters as much as visuals. Many first-time filmmakers focus entirely on what the camera sees and neglect audio. Viewers will forgive shaky camera work. They will not forgive inaudible dialogue or distracting background noise.
- You do not need to be objective. This is not journalism. It is creative filmmaking. Your perspective, your opinion, your emotional response to the theme is the point. Do not hide behind neutrality when your own experience is what makes the film worth watching.
The festival even has a resource page on how to make a video specifically for young filmmakers who are submitting for the first time. Use it.
How to Submit
Submissions are open right now for the 2026 edition. You fill in the entry form directly on the PLURAL+ website, upload your video, and submit. The festival accepts submissions on a rolling basis until the annual deadline. Check the submission page for the exact closing date for the 2026 edition.
Submit your video here: pluralplus.unaoc.org/submit
Rules and FAQs: pluralplus.unaoc.org/submission/rules
Final Thoughts
The world is full of stories that are not being told. Not because they are not interesting. Not because no one wants to hear them. But because the people who lived them have not yet found the platform to share them. PLURAL+ is that platform. The UN has built an infrastructure specifically to find young people with cameras and stories and give their work a global audience. That infrastructure is open right now and it costs you nothing to use it.
If you have a camera – even a phone – and a story about migration, diversity, belonging, or what it means to live alongside people who are different from you, you have everything you need to submit. For young people looking to build a bigger portfolio of international recognition alongside this, it is worth also exploring the African Descent Fellowship where you can learn human rights directly from UN experts. The themes of that fellowship connect directly to everything PLURAL+ stands for.
Looking for more competitions, prizes, and opportunities for young creatives and changemakers? Browse our full Events section for regular updates.
