Festival Review: Beeston Film Festival

The Beeston Film Festival represents the Midlands film community at its absolute best: quality filmmaking, diverse voices, a whole range of genres and perspectives, and plenty of great people from across the industry to connect with. The 11th annual Beeston Film Festival was no exception; I was lucky enough to attend the festival this weekend, and came out of it with a fresh appreciation for short films and the people who make them. Beeston is the greatest kind of film festival: one that seeks simply to bring together a local community that is passionate about this wonderful art form, and to share some great pieces of film from a diverse range of artists from around the world. The event was exceptionally well organised, with all of the staff doing an incredible job at presenting. I had a fantastic time at this festival, and would love to make attending it a yearly habit from now on.

The festival features a huge variety of short films from filmmakers across the globe. These short films are split into a series of two hour blocks, grouped together based on their shared themes and styles, and shown over four days of festival. I was able to see three of these blocks, and found them to be in equal parts funny, shocking, and profoundly moving. The first one I was able to catch was Inside So Strong, a collection of deeply compelling and emotional dramas that I thoroughly enjoyed. There was a particular focus in this set on themes of family and loss, as seen in shorts like Xing Long, A Mother Goes to the Beach, and The Contact; the filmmakers here were able to communicate the ideas of familial loss incredibly effectively in a relatively short span of time, and I found it very interesting how these different films from all across the world were, at their core, gesturing towards the same ideas of family and memory. In particular, from this set, I was really touched by Ogham, an Irish film set in 1847 during the Great Famine, which expertly employs the techniques of horror movie making to bring to life the terror and deprivation of this historical era. The imagery, set pieces, and performances of this film have really stuck in my mind, and continue to affect me days later - I think especially of a shot where the protagonist is buried alive (which, apparently, was not even in the script) which filled me with a very real and overwhelming feeling of panic, dread and claustrophobia. I really appreciated how this film was able to use the conventions of horror to make history feel real and present - it is certainly an experience that will stay with me for a long time. Some of the cast and crew behind Ogham were actually present for a Q&A after the films, and hearing them elaborate on their method for putting history on screen in this film only deepened my appreciation for this short.  

The next series I was able to see was titled Nervous Smile. This was a collection of short films grouped together, somewhat more loosely, based on themes like love, depression, resisting conformity, and the difficulties of navigating and maintaining relationships. This selection offered a really exciting variety genres and themes, with shorts like Amigo offering humour and satire, I Stole Your Ashes offering a genuinely heart-warming, if poignant, love story, horror in Nervous Ellie, and emotional drama in West of the Horizon and Tidy House, as well as the incredible animation of Core and Homework. It’s a difficult balancing act, to be able to group these disparate films together and have them fit together coherently, but I think the organisers of this festival were able to pull it off masterfully. The comedy, horror, and drama juxtapose each other nicely - exploring the same fundamental ideas, but through different tonal lenses, is a great way to see an issue from every perspective. I loved all of these films, but Nervous Ellie really stood out for me. The film was a genuinely frightening horror, employing body horror effects that were in equal parts wonderful and stomach churning. The twist at the end of the short was terrifying, and very imaginative. The true horror of this short, however, comes not from the gorey effects, but rather from the amazing lead performance from Kelsey Cooke (Ellie), who perfectly portrays a shy girl on her first date. Cooke’s performance here is truly devastating, as she trips over her words, fidgets in her seat, struggles to fill awkward silences - I felt an enormous sympathy towards her, so much so that I would have to say this film upset me far more than it scared me. This film takes an embarrassing situation that will be all too familiar to many viewers, and transforms it into a shocking gross-out horror. The end product is a truly uncomfortable and memorable horror experience.

The final of the three sets of short films I was able to see was Eat Your Veg!, a selection of comedies which left me in high spirits as the festival neared its conclusion. This selection featured some really fun and quite light-hearted comedies, like Two Minutes and The Bell Never Rings Again, which were wonderfully entertaining and incredibly well written, and, in the case of The Bell Never Rings Again, featured a surprising and impressive musical sequence. What I really appreciated about these shorts though was how they were able to utilize comedy to touch upon and explore much deeper themes and social issues, such as Give A Way, which, through comedy, offered a critique of toxic masculinity. Another great example of this can be found in House Hunters, a particular favourite of mine from this set. This dark comedy, which satirizes the housing market and real estate industry, depicts a world in which, in order to buy a new home, buyers must first kill the previous tenants. The film was, of course, incredibly bleak and depressing, but it was also funny enough that it never really brought my mood down. The social commentary here was intelligent, and the plot unique and original, making the film a great addition to this selection of comedies. The Soup was another film from this selection that paired intelligent social commentary, this time centered on class, with some witty comedic writing and some fantastic comedic performances. This film succeeds in mining some brilliant comedy out of performances and line delivery; one scene, where the main character has to order a glass of wine in front of both his girlfriend and his childhood friend, but is embarrassed about his friend hearing him act posh to impress his rich girlfriend by pronouncing the word ‘glass’ with a southern accent, was genius. Another scene, where the main character suspects his friend has urinated in his soup, but has to eat some anyway so as not to alarm his girlfriend, was hilarious and excruciating. Overall, I was impressed with how all these films managed to explore complex and sometimes distressing themes, whilst still always remembering to be funny.

After all the sets of short films were done, the weekend concluded with the B’Oscars, an awards ceremony for all the short films shown over the course of the festival. Films like Delivery and The Pearl Comb won big here, with The Pearl Comb winning the final Best in Festival award. The B’Oscars were a perfect celebration of all the great films we were graced with throughout the festival, a really fun event and a great way to show our appreciation to all of the incredible filmmakers who put themselves out there and gifted us with some amazing short films. What I liked so much about the B’Oscars, and this goes for the whole festival really, is how, on the surface, it is presented as a humourous and light-hearted awards ceremony, but as you delve into it, it becomes clear that it is an incredibly earnest and heartfelt celebration of global film and the artists who devote their lives to it, put together by a group of people who are genuinely passionate about film. I seriously adored this awards show, and I think it was the perfect culmination to an incredible few days. 

What worked so well about this festival was how it managed to assemble so many different films from across the world, from such a diverse field of artists and filmmakers, that nevertheless came together perfectly to communicate the same essential messages, truths and emotions. What the short films at this festival really represent is the universality of the human experience - that no matter where you are in the world, no matter the conditions you live in, we can all understand and appreciate the same emotions and ideas that artists portray; I think that perhaps this is the real value of global film, and it was captured superbly by this festival. The festival left me with a much deeper understanding of and appreciation for global cinema, and I feel so honoured to have been a part of it.