Encounters Film Festival: What is it about?

In previous years I’ve attended two film festivals, both which I had entered into. One a professional and nationwide event in 2018, and one my college set up for an in house competition. Both were two very different experiences, but both were premiering my own work. This time, I’ll be attending a film festival solely as a viewer and nothing else. I’ll get to immerse myself in as many films as I want and watch in depth talks with the filmmakers themselves, without the nerves of broadcasting my own film to a bunch of strangers.

Encounters Film Festival is normally based in Bristol but with COVID 19 still making events difficult to hold in person, Encounters Film Festival will be held online for it’s 2nd year in a row. What makes this different is instead of attending the festival for 3 days, watching all the films on a big screen with the filmmakers themselves, the festival takes place from the 1st of September to the 30th. The festival has curated playlists of up to 1 to 2 hours of viewing at a time or you have the opportunity to view the films individually.

They have also filmed Q&A sessions with some of the filmmakers and uploaded them for us to view. While it’s not live, giving us the chance to ask our own questions, a lot of interesting topics get brought up. And if you have a dire question that hasn’t been answered, every filmmaker's email is on the website too.

This festival is a mixture of both live action and animation giving a wide range of content to view, it is also an international festival with a surprising amount of foreign films in the mix. This interests me the most as these films portray and show you a different outlook of peoples culture around the world, giving you a story that you might not have seen before.

The festival started in 1995 with the aim of celebrating cinema. It was only in 2001 when Encounters created a separate event solely for animated films: Animation Encounters. The two festivals were then merged into one in 2006, as “Encounters Short Film Festival''. In 2010 and 2011, the festival partnered up with Academy Awards Short Film Category and European Film Academy Short Film Initiative. Now the festival is the perfect gateway opportunity for filmmakers to make it in the Academy Awards, BAFTAs, BIFAs and the European Film Awards. The festival allows a lot of talk about opportunities given to both new and experienced filmmakers.

With the festival being run differently online, I will be watching both curated playlists and picking and choosing individual films to watch, while also discussing the events and interactions.