BFI Future Film Festival Returns

The BFI Future Film Festival returns for its seventh year from 21-23 February, with a line-up of workshops, masterclasses, networking opportunities, screenings and Q&As at BFI Southbank.
The weekend events are open to anyone aged 15 - 25 with a ticket, and will include a Q&A with Oscar and BAFTA winning Visual Effects Supervisor Neil Corbould (The Fifth Element, The Day After Tomorrow), who has just been nominated for an Oscar and a BAFTA for Best Visual Effects for his work on Gravity (Dir. Alfonso Cuarón, 2013).
For the second year, the festival will be divided into three themes.
Friday 21 February will focus on documentary, Saturday 22 February on fiction and Sunday 23 February on animation.
All three days will feature workshops hosted by the BFI Film Academy, as well as work by recent Film Academy graduates.
The festival will host the Future Film Awards, with categories for documentary, fiction and animation in short and feature categories.
Day one of the Festival will focus on documentary filmmaking. A session highlight will be DocNext: Radical Democracy, which will look at documentary's relevance as a tool for social change and political commentary, using recent films such as Blackfish, The Act of Killing and Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer as a platform for debate.
There will also be guest speakers from the industry such as Director of Programming at Sheffield Doc/Fest Hussain Currimbhoy, a live VJ performance of DocNext: European Souvenirs and a preview of Mark Cousins' The Story of Children and Film.
Day two will be dedicated to fiction storytelling and will feature workshops and panel discussions aimed to equip participants with the tools to take their fiction filmmaking to the next level.
Highlights will include masterclasses for budding production designers, casting directors and cinematographers with industry talent such as Casting Director Jeremy Zimmerman (Moon, Hellboy). Workshops will focus on finding the perfect soundtrack, no-to-low budget filmmaking and writing for female characters. There will also be special screenings of features including one of the year's most talked about films Gravity (2013), followed by a Q&A with Visual Effects Supervisor Neil Corbould, and new UK coming-of-age flick We Are The Freaks (2013) plus a Q&A with cast and crew.
The third and final day of the Festival sees animation take centre stage. A highlight of the day will be Getting in the VFX Industry, offering participants the chance to hear from those in the know, recruiters, HR advisors and industry professionals about what the VFX landscape offers for new entrants, how to get noticed and what the rewards are in this fast moving environment.
Sessions throughout the BFI Future Film Festival will be suitable for people of all levels and abilities - from beginners to those more experienced - with plenty of opportunities to network too! The Festival is designed for budding directors, writers, producers and those interested in other key roles to gain experience across animation, documentary and fiction filmmaking.
bfi.org.uk/futurefilm
(IT/JP)