The idea for this publication stemmed from the Reframing Film Festivals conference that the curators of this special issue organised in Venice in February 2020, which was conceived to foster research engagement with the histories of film festivals and their relationship with film historiography and canons.1 During this two-day event, among the contributions dedicated to the micro-histories of a variety of festivals based in Central and Eastern Europe, South America and South-East Asia, several artists, curators, archivists and historians from France, Austria, Italy, Chile and Spain presented research focused on non-theatrical cultures and related festivals. This strand of research ranged from historical analysis of international competitions for amateur filmmakers to theorisations of the festivals dedicated to analog video art and time-based art, from the study of the historical developments of national non-fiction festivals to the mapping of ethnographic film festival circuits. Hence, in this special issue dedicated to non-theatrical film festivals, readers will find a combination of voices representing film cultures that have been developing outside of movie theatres and away from the logics of theatrical distribution, as the title implies.