Film festival set to return to Nottingham for its 9th year

The popular Beeston Film Festival is set to return to The Arc Cinema in Beeston on Thursday 13 April and Sunday 16 April. The film festival which champions small, independent filmmakers is now in its 9th year.

This is the second year that the film festival has partnered with The Arc in Beeston to bring it to the big screen. The festival attracts huge numbers of submissions by hopeful filmmakers across the globe with some entries from Ireland, Germany and the US.

The festival showcases short independent films divided into categories such as drama, horror, comedy, women’s voice, Pride and more. This year will also see films with an East Midlands focus in a separate category. There are an incredible 21 different sessions to choose from so there will be something for everyone’s taste.

Festival Director John Currie revealed that there have been over 800 entries from 60 different countries this year. A record for the festival but they have also had a huge increase in local talent with many submissions coming in from Beeston itself.

“We are excited as it's our second year at The Arc, who were so incredibly supportive and wonderful. Last year was great but we had room to improve so we’ve learned lessons and put those into action. We feel well organised and we have some wonderful films this year as well as fifty filmmakers planning to attend,” he said.

“We have some filmmakers from Kazakhstan planning to attend who are the furthest afield. They have a wonderful film in the science fiction and fantasy section. It’s a Kazakhstan period drama, sort of Games of Thrones with more spirituality.”

He added: “We’ve had loads of submissions from Colombia, Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Brazil . On the other side, we’ve had a lot of phenomenal entries from Beeston. Our opening night is called Beeston and beyond. We are really excited about some great local films.”

A team of volunteers watch hundreds of films to rate and select those which will make the cut. This year, just 157 were selected from over 800 submissions which means some serious hours spent watching the TV with lots of popcorn.

The highlight of the festival is the award ceremony which sees film-makers selected for a prestigious 'B'Oscars' award. The B'Oscars have travelled across the globe in previous years to reach the winners and are made locally.

This year will also see the introduction of workshops that visitors can choose to attend such as Queer Horror Cinema discussions and Raising Finance for future filmmakers. These will be held in the Yellow Wood Cafe on Chilwell Road in Beeston.

John highlighted that next year will see the festival hit a milestone in that it will celebrate ten years of the Beeston Film Festival. Celebrations have already been discussed to make this even bigger than before.

“We are going to introduce a second week of international independent feature films. We will also be going to Cannes Film Festival again this year to meet with distributors and filmmakers. We are already starting to think about the programming possibilities that we can have for next year,” he said.

“We already have some exciting guests lined up, but I can’t say more than that. The tenth year will be a bit crazy but then, so will this year.”

The tickets cost 5 each and are available online from The Arc and Beeston Film Festival. You can buy a festival pass or individual tickets depending on how many categories you would like to see. You can find the entire programme on both websites.