The Festival takes place across Berwick-upon-Tweed from 27–30 March.
With the support of Arts Council England, North East Combined Authority, the BFI awarding funds from the National Lottery, Northumberland County Council, and the Community Foundation serving Tyne & Wear and Northumberland.
Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival (BFMAF) celebrates its 20th anniversary this spring, unveiling four days of transformative cinema, exhibitions, and dynamic conversations taking place across England’s most northerly town.
Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival (BFMAF) is an artistically ambitious organisation for new cinema and artists’ moving image based in North Northumberland on the English border with Scotland.
A work in progress, leading through collaboration, it has a resolute commitment to the mutual development of the artists, audiences, filmmakers and programmers that make the Festival possible.
The Festival enacts pluralist ideas of contemporary cinema, its history and curation. Short, medium or feature-length Festival selections can include arthouse, documentary or genre cinema; artists’ moving image and sound; world premieres and freshly restored archival titles; or live, installation-based or performative works of cinema. Together, they hold shared and overlapping interests in asking what new cinema might be.
BFMAF strives to understand and work towards optimal exhibition conditions for artists and filmmakers’ work within the resources and contexts it has available. In evaluating this, the accessibility of audiences and communities that it is involved with – locally, regionally, nationally and internationally are of utmost consideration.
Festival Director Peter Taylor reflects,
“Rooted in England’s most northerly town, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival is a perpetual work in progress—rejecting labels that might restrict how we see, understand, and experience cinema. Instead, we embrace pluralist ideas and fluid modes of production and presentation, culminating in a kaleidoscopic, transformative programme of film and conversation—instruments of liberation. For our 20th Edition, we’re excited to welcome you back to Berwick!”
The 20th BFMAF showcases over 50 films across the Festival’s programme and 5 exhibitions in key venues around town. The film programme includes 6 World Premieres, 1 International Premiere, 8 European Premieres, and 26 UK Premieres, with 28 countries represented.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE 2025 CINEMA PROGRAMMES FOCUS PROGRAMMES
● Eri Makihara (Japan) – A revelatory first major European retrospective of Makihara’s work. Deeply rooted in the physicality of communication, language, silence, and the bodily experience of time, her films navigate the intricacies of sign language and visual forms of expression, centering the experiences of Deaf individuals and communities. The programme, supported by the British Council, features LISTEN (2016), Dream of My Mother (2023), and The Tanaka Family (2021). [All films in the programme will screen on March 29, as interpreters will be available on the day to facilitate access for all audiences.]
● Ayanna Dozier (USA) – A bold, first European survey of the Brooklyn-based artist’s film practice, which considers notions of performance, transactional intimacy, as well as medical and sexual justice. Dozier's practice makes visible histories erased by systemic white supremacist patriarchy, creating an emotive response through experimentation. A selection of short works include Bounded Intimacy (United States, 2024), Nightwalker (United States, 2022), and the World Premiere of A Whore in the House of the Lord (United States, 2025).
● Ways of Seeing Fanon – Curated by Philip Rizk, this programme proposes a re-reading of Frantz Fanon (Martinique, 1925–61) through an Arab lens, recontextualising the militant psychiatrist, thinker, and fighter’s texts within the African region that shaped his radicalisation.
Together, these films articulate a critical reframing of neocolonialism, which Fanon presciently elucidated as a system of shared coercive powers between inside and outside forces.
Other highlights include:
New Cinema Awards
New cinema forum and Early Career Critics
Alongside the film and exhibition programme, BFMAF presents the first edition of the New Cinema Forum, a programme of events inviting filmmakers, artists and workers in these fields to consider new orientations to creating, exhibiting and working collectively. The New Cinema Forum will take place on Thursday 27 March 2025, with further opportunities to engage in roundtables over the Festival weekend.
Find out everything you need to know about the festival on their website.
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