A reflection on the festival so far

Two editions in, it is worth looking back honestly at what this festival has actually been, and what we want to carry into the third.

We began in October 2024, across three days at The Chiswick Cinema. Opening night set the tone we have kept ever since: the UK premiere of the Italian feature Flaminia, followed by a Q and A with its director, Michela Giraud. International work, a filmmaker in the room, and an audience willing to stay and ask real questions. That was the festival in miniature, and it is still what we are chasing.

More than a screening room

From the start we wanted the festival to be useful to filmmakers, not just a place to be watched. Alongside the short film selections we ran a four minute pitching competition with a real prize on the table. We put on a festival strategy session with Rebekah Louisa Smith, a production talk with the producer Gina Lyon, a workshop on turning a short film into a series with Alessandra Gonnella, and an acting workshop with Paul McNeilly. There was even an animation workshop for children, led by the BAFTA nominated director Simone Giampaolo, and a frank panel on mental health in the industry. A festival, we decided early, should send people home with something they can use.

The programme itself ranged widely, from drama and comedy to documentary, animation, horror, music video and international shorts, and each edition closed with an awards ceremony. That first year we sent everyone off with a stand up comedy set, because a festival should also know how to throw a party.

A good festival is measured less by who attends than by what people are still thinking about on the way home.

Growing into a second edition

In October 2025 the festival returned, larger and more confident, moving to Ealing Picturehouse. Across the two editions we have now presented around a hundred and forty films and welcomed more than three hundred guests, from first time directors to people who have spent a lifetime around cinema. On paper those are numbers. In the room they were something else entirely.

What we learned

The Q and As taught us the most. We kept them honest, sometimes to our own discomfort, and audiences repaid that with real questions rather than applause lines. We learned that curation is not a filter but a point of view, that every film we turned down made the ones we chose mean more, and that hospitality matters as much as programming. A community does not arrive fully formed. It gathers, slowly, one edition at a time, around people who keep coming back.

None of this is finished. A third edition is a chance to be sharper about what we choose, more generous to the people who make the work, and clearer about the kind of room we are trying to create. We are grateful to everyone who has been part of it so far, and we are only getting started.