Northampton Film Festival is back in 2021 with all-star judges including James Bond actor

Screen Northants’ Northampton Film Festival will be back in May 2021 with a week-long schedule of physical and virtual events including those postponed in 2020 due to Covid-19.

It comes after a successful pilot in 2019, which has led to Screen Northants hosting what will be the first full Northampton Film Festival this year between May 12 until 19.

Screen Northants offer free support to schools and local people to produce their own films, aims to make the movie industry more accessible and provides opportunities for residents to

view a wide variety of films.

The festival aims to celebrate Northampton’s creativity with a short film competition judged by actor Colin Salmon (Charles Robinson from James Bond), comedian Hugh Dennis (Pete Brockman from Outnumbered) and actor Julie Hesmondhalgh (Hayley from Coronation Street).

The short film competition, funded by the National Lottery, will also run alongside a schools competition, a film careers fair and feature film screenings with Q&As.

Becky Adams, producer at social enterprise film company Screen Northants said: “Northampton Film Festival 2020: 'Kind of a Big Deal' was postponed due to COVID-19 but 2021 will be even bigger and better.

"2020 has shown everyone just how important film and the creative industries are to our lives and through the festival we aim to show how Northampton can be at the front and centre of that in the future."

In January, Screen Northants will restart the 48 hour film challenge - where a industry guest judge sets a film theme on Friday evening, giving budding filmmakers only 48 hours to deliver a finished short film.

The same challenge will take place on the last weekend of every month between January and April 2021 where students could be in with a chance of winning and being entered into the Winner of Winners category at the festival itself. The first theme will be announced on Friday, January 29 and needs to be delivered on Sunday, January 31.

Also, in January, Screen Northants is launching a free-to-enter schools short film competition for primary, secondary and sixth form schools and colleges.

If you would like to register your interest email forty [email protected] [email protected].