An upcoming film festival plans to bring a taste of New York — and the world — to Iowa City in an effort to connect moviegoers from most continents.

The Manhattan Short Film Festival will showcase 10 films from 10 countries at the Bijou beginning Sept. 20. Showings will run through Sept. 24; admission is $5.

Countries from all over the world will have films in the festival. Showings include films from the United States, Spain, Sweden, Israel, an animated film from France, and a documentary from Mozambique.

“This is something that allows people to see different movies that probably wouldn’t see the light of day without it,” Bijou programming director Zane Umsted said. “You could call it a global Landlocked Film Festival. It’s a good opportunity to see some different kinds of stuff.”

Viewers at the Bijou get to do more than just watch movies — they will also get to judge the films. Audience members are encouraged to visit the festival’s website after the screenings and vote for their favorites. Winners will be announced online Sept. 29.

Though this will be the festival’s first year at the Bijou, it has been around for 12 years, festival founding director Nicholas Mason said.

“I put a screen on the side of a truck in New York City,” Mason said in describing the festival’s origins. “The following year, we moved to Union Square Park.”

The festival began to garner more attention — and more entries — after the organizers held it only 12 days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“We just happened to be in the right place at the wrong time,” Mason said. “People started to go to the cinema to connect.”

For him, the festival isn’t about the movies themselves but about the people who come together to watch them. Even the awards that the festival gives away are secondary to Mason.

“It’s about grabbing the 10 best short films in the world and somehow uniting the world with them,” he said. “I really don’t care about [the awards]. I care about putting this in Beirut and Tel Aviv on the same day.”

The goal is not to find the best film, he said, and organizers don’t seek out the films that are screened.

“There’s no such word as the ‘best,’ ” he said. “I think a great lesson that anyone can learn, be it looking for films or looking for love, is don’t look for anything. Let it find you rather than you find it. We don’t look for a thing. It finds us.”

The Manhattan Short Film Festival will hold 532 screenings in 173 cities on five continents between Saturday and Sept. 27.

With the addition of Iowa and other states, this is the first year that the festival will hold screenings in all 50 states. Organizers plan to expand to Africa in 2010 and Antarctic ice stations in 2011, according to the festival’s website.

While the Bijou may not be as exciting as a theater in Antarctica, Mason said, it is one of the theaters he has been trying the hardest to incorporate into the festival.

“I’ve been after that cinema for three years now,” he said. “The Bijou was a theater that we had to be in. It makes a difference that we have the colleges of this country part of this. If this is going to have an impact, it’s going to come from the fact that we’re [at colleges].”