Archive

2019

Cheltenham International Film Festival launched in 2019 and made an instant impact, screening over 40 films from 20 countries. We welcomed celebrated filmmakers including legendary, multi-award winning director, Mike Leigh; Oscar-nominated, Polish director, Jan Komasa; theatre/film director, Josie Rourke (Mary Queen of Scots); and actor, writer, director, enfant-terrible, Steven Berkoff, among others.  We were joined by first-time features director,  Carl Hunter, to introduce his opening night film, Sometimes Always Never, starring 2023 Oscar nominee, Bill Nighy.

2020

2020 – what a year! Never to be forgotten.  We were well into preparations when Covid struck.  Overnight we had lockdowns.  Cheltenham International Film Festival became the first international film festival in the UK to respond by streaming its entire programme online.  The reaction was positive.  The Festival opened with Lost Transmissions starring Simon Pegg.  Simon was also on hand via Zoom to introduce his opening night film. That year many of the world’s filmmakers took part in the film festival answering audience questions after the streaming of their films.

2021

The festival opened with a preview of the Oscar-winning film, The Father, starring Sir Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman.  We were still bound by lockdown rules and continued to stream festival films through our new streaming service YourScreen https://watch.yourscreen.net. We marked the 50^th anniversary of Stephen Frears’ first film, Gumshoe, with a special screening, accompanied by an interview with Stephen.  We introduced a new category of award BEST FILM – open to emerging directors – won by I Never Cry (Piotr Domalewski).

2022

Festival highlight was “An Afternoon with Dame Judi Dench” before a live audience. This was our first full season back as a live film festival and we also streamed films to give access to a wider audience.  Following on from Poland and Italy in previous years, we nominated Ukraine as our Country in Focus.  BEST FILM was the Swiss-Ukrainian film Olga by Elie Grappe. Ukrainian films were stark, realistic and hard, none more so than Rhino. Rhino’s producer, Dariusz Jablonski, spoke about the film in the absence of the film’s director Oleh Sentsov, who had exchanged the red carpet for the muddy fields of war.

2023

The film festival celebrated its fifth anniversary in 2023, to much acclaim and well-received guests.  Highlight was the presentation of our new Master Award to Sir Stephen Frears for his contribution to great cinema.  We also took pride in screening the UK premiere of Ken Loach’s final film, The Old Oak, in the presence of the director.  The festival opened with a screening of Typist Artist Pirate King and on hand were director, Carol Morley, producer Cairo Cannon, and the film’s star, Monica Dolan. We also welcomed Timothy Spall (Bolan’s Shoes) and talented directors, emerging and more, to discuss the films we screened as premieres. And, we added a new television strand with a preview of the BBC Television drama, Boiling Point, with cast, producers and writers.

2024

The festival opened with a sold-out screening of the comedy, Timestalker, followed by a discussion with its director, Alice Lowe. Over the opening weekend, legendary director, Tony Palmer, attended to introduce screenings of Holst: In The Bleak Midwinter and Leonard Cohen: Bird On A Wire and to share stories about with our audience. During the week, we hosted Virginia Gilbert with her debut feature, Reawakening, starring Juliette Stephenson and Jared Harris, and German director, Nora Fingscheidt, and author, Amy Liptrot, came for an audience Q&A which followed the screening of The Outrun adapted from Amy’s book for the screen. We were delighted to welcome from India, Preeti Panigrahi, who picked up a Sundance Special Jury Award for her film Girls Will Be Girls and Patrick Dickinson with his first feature, Cottontail. The week concluded with Pattie Boyd’s talk on Beatlemania after a screening of A Hard Day’s Night. The final Sunday saw a sold-out audience for Arthur’s Whisky, with invited stars Patricia Hodge, Lulu, and director Stephen Cookson. A panel with Jonathan Pie (Tom Walker), Michael Dobbs, Maurice Gran, and Sir David Davis MP for our comedy slot on political satire rounded off the festival. Highlights also included CineYouth’s programme for young filmmakers and a film shorts programme for members of the public, young filmmakers, and students at the University of Gloucestershire.