Brussels Porn Film Festival 2023 to put sexting, dating apps, and social media center stage

The Brussels Porn Film Festival (BPFF), Belgium’s first porn festival, is set to take place on May 4-7, 2023 with a focus on short and feature films that can be watched online or in person at the event.

Sex and technology issues will be covered in films such as a documentary by Viennese director Jan Soldat about sexting, plus there will also be the international premiere of Q2TO, a film about social media by director Loïs Saumande.

Dating app culture will also be covered, in a film entitled Intimacy, by Italian director Matteo Giampetruzzi. The film is described as a “conversation on dating app alternatives with the images of a body.”

78 of the films being screened at the event will be made available to ticket-holders to stream online for two weeks after the end of the festival, on May 8, to May 22. The streaming service will be run by the porn streaming site PinkLabel.TV.

A festival pass costs €25, with tickets for individual screenings costing between six and eight Euros each. However, free or lower-cost tickets are being made available via a ‘pay-what-you-like’ system allowing you to pay lower than the full price for some events.

Beyond Film

As well as film screenings, the festival will feature panel talks and exhibitions. Organizers said they wanted to place focus on helping sex workers, so created the event in conjunction with the Sex Workers Narratives Arts & Politics (SNAP!) Festival.

“Individuals who are marginalized due to their erotic identities, gender, race, class, or bodily characteristics find in the production of sexually explicit content a powerful space for expression and reappropriation,” the organizers said. “Sex workers, who are longstanding pillars of the pornographic industry and social outcasts, occupy a crucial place in debates on these complex issues.”

Despite a few neighbouring countries legalizing prostitution at the turn of the century, in 2022 Belgium became the first European country to fully decriminalize sex work.

At the time, Belgium’s Federal Justice Minister Vincent Van Quickenborn said: “In terms of sex work, this is a historic reform. It ensures that sex workers are no longer stigmatized, exploited, and made dependent on others.”

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