For the 7th time, Beeston Film Festival returns again this year, even in the era of lockdowns and gathering restrictions. Held completely online, the festival doesn’t neglect its mission of bringing the world to Nottingham through a great selection of short films from nations all around the globe. While you can’t physically come and see the selection in venues and explore the wonderful Beeston area, the films are still here to make you forget about reality for an hour or two and to have a great evening watching them.

The festival has a diverse jury of filmmakers and industry experts from not just the UK but from countries like France, Germany and India as well. Each year, they sit down and comb through a vast number of submissions to choose the best films for Beeston Film Festival’s audience to be screened and nominated in eleven genre categories, five technical ones and a conclusive ‘Best in Festival’ category. They’re also responsible for awarding the filmmakers with our very own ‘B’Oscars’ at the end of the festival.

Like all previous years, viewers can expect a week (22nd-28th March) full of incredible screening sessions from which every can choose their pick suited to their tastes. From dramas and horrors, to comedies and animates shorts, Beeston offers a colourful variety of international short films that will let you travel the globe even when you can scarcely leave your county.
On Monday, you can enjoy two screening slots - the first dedicated to opening the festival with some of the best shorts we have, the second showcasing student films.

Tuesday brings another two sessions. The first is the first part of the drama selection. The second is an exciting category presented in an earlier article - Women’s Voices, which includes incredible stories about women from diverging cultures and places.

If you want a little taste of everything the festival has to offer, Wednesday’s ‘Variety Pack’ can offer you multiple genres of films and a very diverse range of stories. After that, the ‘Science Fiction’ session will take you out of the world.

On Thursday, you can see the rest of the drama selection in the first screening session. Later, our exciting category ‘A Better Place’ will be showcasing stories that chronicle the human drive to uplift our world, to have hope and to focus on the good things, on positive change we are more than capable of.

Friday offers another ‘Variety Pack’ of short films as well as the screening of our horror selection, perfect for a Friday night where you can be spooked in the comfort of your own darkened living room.

Saturday kicks off the weekend with a fuller schedule. With five screening slots, you can enjoy the first part of our animation selection and similarly, the first half of our comedy shorts. Later, our crime category comes on before another great category - ‘Pride’. It has been introduced in a separate blog post and it’s a wonderful opportunity to take the time to listen to queer stories. The day wraps up with the third and final part of the drama selection.

On Sunday, the day starts with the second half of our animated shorts, around midday which is a perfect opportunity for children to enjoy some, to them, unconventional filmmaking. Our nonfiction selection comes on next and after it another ‘Variety Pack’. Beeston Film Festival wraps up with a final screening of the second half of our comedy selection in the evening.

Written by Sara Jakubcova