Bolton International Festival to roll out red carpet in October

Bolton International Film Festival returns for its seventh year next month ­— with some leading names in the industry, both behind the scenes and on screen.

Running from Wednesday, October 4 to Sunday,October 8, the BIFA and BAFTA accredited short film festival will be screening 300 short films including 42 world premieres, 20 European premieres and 77 UK premieres.

Visitors to the Light Cinema in Bolton will be given the opportunity to see work from some of the world’s most exciting filmmakers, and to participate in Q and A’s and masterclasses with highly respected figures from within the film and television industry.

Ricky Gervais makes his directorial debut with the dark comedy “7 Minutes” and other short films feature well known names such as Aidan Turner, Robert Webb, Juliet Stevenson and Joe Wilkinson.

Julie Hesmondhalgh will attend the festival supporting “The Group”, which she stars in.

Audiences will be introduced to many other short films by some of the world’s rising stars, such as a directorial debut from Ben Brewer who worked as lead visual effects artist on ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’.

Organisers say there’s something for all tastes - drama, comedy, documentary, animation, horror, sci-fi, family friendly, fashion films, dance films and award-winning VR.

There are also over 20 industry events this year including sessions with Tim Webber, Chief Creative Officer at Framestore, who will be joining us to discuss his 30-plus years career in digital visual effects, with projects including Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’, James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’, and his Academy and BAFTA Award-winning work on Alfonso Cuarón’s ‘Gravity’.

BAFTA-winning screenwriter Danny Brocklehurst will be sharing his creative writing process, he is the creator/writer of Sky’s most successful comedy series ‘Brassic’, his other credits include ‘Shameless’, ‘Clocking Off’, ‘Talk to Me’ and recently ‘Ten Pound Poms’.

BAFTA-winning animator Elizabeth Hobbs will share her film-making journey and her creative process and Bart Yates the Founder of Blink Ink, one of London's top commercial production companies, will delve into his though process when spotting and developing up and coming talent.

Representatives from the British Film Institute, Doc Society and BBC Writers Room will also be in attendance, as well as festival programmers from Raindance, Sheffield Doc Fest and Manchester Animation Festival, in the hope of offering support and guidance to those looking to forge and develop a career in the screen industries.

Adrian Barber, the festival director said “Each year the festival grows in size and stature, the reputation of the festival has now stretched across the globe and we’ve recently reached the Top 50 most popular festivals from over 12,000. We’re a community led festival, primarily run by volunteers, so its amazing to see stars send in their films and in many cases come and support the films in person.”

Flash back: Picture from previous film festival

The festival received over 3000 submissions this year and Adrian explained the process is not a simple task, “There is a lot of heated debate between us as to which films we should share with our audiences, but I feel that our instincts are getting it right so far. Last year we had seven films travel on to the final stages of the OSCARS, nine were nominated to the BAFTAs and one film went on to win both the major awards.”

The festival is now recognised as the leading short film festival in the region, one of only twenty BAFTA accredited short film festivals in the UK and one of eight four worldwide.

Tickets and passes are now on sale, more details on the event can be found on the festivals website : www.boltonfilmfestival.com