The Brighton Film Festival

That’s a wrap on the 23rd CINECITY Brighton Film Festival. A bumper year across 18 days in which 32 previews, four UK premieres and one world premiere came to the big screens of Brighton and Lewes.

We opened this year’s festival at Duke of York’s with a sold-out preview of Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet and closed with another Duke of York’s sell-out with Rental Family
from director Hikari. 

CINECITY presented a host of films, including many award-winners, all playing in the region for the first time. Among the international line-up there were feature films from around the world including Brazil, Iran, Nigeria, Japan, Morrocco, Tunisia, Australia, France, Norway, Iceland, Spain. 

AUDIENCE AWARD WINNERS: 

The CINECITY 2025 Audience Award Winner was the powerful The Voice of Hind Rajab (dir: Kaouther Ben Hania) with a Special Mention to The Haunted Moustache featuring David Bramwell. The Audience Award Winner for Documentary was Goodbye Breasts! directed by Joanna Callaghan with a Special Mention for Move Ya Body: The Birth of House (dir: Elegance Bratton).

DEBUTS:

In a particularly strong year for first features, CINECITY showcased Pillion, the directorial debut of Harry Lighton and My Father’s Shadow, from British-Nigerian filmmaker Akinola Davies Jr. We also screened Sci-fi animated comedy Lesbian Space Princess, the debut from duo Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese, winner of the TEDDY award for best queer feature at Berlin earlier this year and Game, the directorial debut of John Minton.

Game was followed by a Q&A with John Minton, co-writer and producer Geoff Barrow, co-writer Rob Williams and actor Marc Bessant. CINECITY also welcomed directors Andrew Kötting, Joanna Callaghan, David Bramwell, Andy Mundy-Castle, Layla Triqui and Adrian Goycoolea to speak about their films, along with many cast and crew and special guests. 

REVIEWS:

Thank you to this year’s student reviewers – Anya Snowball, Sebastian Harris and Finlay Castell from University of Sussex who reviewed If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Sirāt, Nouvelle Vague, Pillion, Sentimental Value, Gaslight and Rebecca. 

Read the full reviews over on our Letterboxd 

SHORTS:

We were pleased to present six shorts programmes this year including Long Story Short, a bold new talent initiative from BBC Writers designed to give emerging writers, directors and producers the opportunity to take risks, experiment and make their own mark on the screen. We also welcomed back University of Sussex’s 36 Hour Film Challenge.

Always an exciting evening, New Voices showcased short films from local filmmakers aged 16 – 25, supported by Creative Futures at MetFilm. This year, we were pleased to award the prize for 2025 New Voices winner to Max Mistry for the film Anguilla – a cosmic meditation on obsession and discovery.

MUSIC TO FILM:

Live cinema events are always a highlight of the festival, and this year was no exception. Attenborough Centre for the Creative Arts hosted Adrian Utley (Portishead), Larry Stabbins (Working Week), and the formidable Mark Sanders as they delivered a multi-layered, multifaceted and genre defying improvisation to the avant-garde experimental films of Jeff Keen. 

We were also delighted to welcome Harry Hayes to perform a musical introduction to Sunrise programmed by Fabrica’s Young Programmers, Fresh Perspectives. 

CINE FICTION:

As part of our Cine Fiction strand celebrating the collective cinema experience and cinema-going in literary fiction, we were honoured to welcome celebrated Icelandic author Sjón to Depot, Lewes for an in-conversation with writer Amy Raphael.

Sjón’s writing has been translated into more than 40 languages and he won the Nordic Council literature prize (the Scandinavian equivalent of the Booker) for his twisted folktale The Blue Fox in 2005. He is also a poet and librettist who was Oscar-nominated for his lyrics, for his friend Björk, in the film Dancer in the Dark (2000). He co-wrote the acclaimed films Lamb (2021) and Robert Eggers’ The Northman (2022). The event was complemented by a screening of an episode of Louis Feuillade’s French crime serial Les Vampires with Musidora, which features in Sjón’s acclaimed novel, Moonstone – The Boy Who Never Was.

At Fabrica, we presented a CINE FICTION display of a selection of film posters highlighting some of the luminous, female stars of the silver screen from cinema’s silent era, their films and their appearances in novels. Specially created by CINECITY and 6970 Design and supported by Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

PLAYING THE VAMP:

This illustrated talk with clips from author, critic and film historian Pamela Hutchinson, traced the evolution of one the silent era’s most enduring archetypes as embodied by legendary stars such as Theda Bara, Musidora, Asta Nielsen and Louise Brooks.

TOO MUCH: MELODRAMA ON FILM:

As part of the BFI’s UK-wide season, we screened a classic double bill of psychological thrillers, exploring love and obsession. Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca and the rarely seen Gaslight both made in 1940, were introduced by Pamela Hutchinson.

THANK YOU!

We would like to thank everyone who came to CINECITY screenings and events this year and all the funders and sponsors, filmmakers and distributors, venues and volunteers who made this year’s festival such a success.