While the Glasgow Film Festival wrapped a few weeks ago with more than 33,000 people in attendance at the 12-day event, the festival’s industry program saw a big boost in attendance this year, with numbers up 15% year-on-year.
It’s welcome news for Samantha Andie Bennett, who heads up the GFF Industry Focus section and its talent development labs as she and her team work to position the strand into a significant event on the festival calendar that can attract delegates from around the UK and beyond while, crucially, creating a pipeline to support new local talent.
“We’ve been trying to find a formula and see what works and we’ve been trialling things for the last few years but this year, it just feels like we found the right mix,” she tells Deadline. We’ve been building our network and the new venue – The Social Hub in Glasgow – has been a huge help to making the industry strand what it is.”
In the last decade, the festival’s industry program has grown from a two-day local networking event in 2016 to a four-day national event today. This year saw more than 750 delegates touch down in Glasgow for the Industry Focus strand, which ran March 3-6 and supported 39 filmmaking talents across its three year-round talent development initiatives.
This year writer Kaljeven Lally and producers Isabella Bassett and Jena Hunter won the inaugural Funny Features Industry Audience Award for their project Responsibility. The feature follows Sanjeev who quickly becomes the number one suspect in a bizarre murder case and the target of two opposing crime families, the police and his parents.
The Animatic Talent Development scheme, which facilitates the development of Scottish creatives’ animated features, TV series and short film ideas, entered its second year and the winner for Best TV/Feature Pitch went to animated Scottish folk mystery Lochs & Legends by Abi Lamb. Meanwhile, the award for Best Short Pitch went to To Myself and the Forest of Tigers from Sammi Duong and Hannah Kelso’s adult comedy series Overlords won the inaugural Animatic Industry Audience Award. Wilma Smith’s The Three Graces earned a special mention.
“The good thing about animatic is the entry requirement or experience level is kept quite low because without it, there’s not a huge amount of support out there for people that want to make animated work,” says Bennett.
GFF Industry Focus also has its New Talent mentorship scheme, which it started five years ago and includes six months of mentorship for underrepresented writers, directors and producers. Participants are given one-to-one consultancy sessions, workshops and bespoke mentoring to support the development of their projects. This year, director Ben Wheatley served as one of the mentors.
“It’s helpful for these talents to have someone who can talk them through the industry, demystify it a little bit and give them a roadmap of where to go, how to develop and what they need to get their next project made,” Bennett says.
In addition to the labs, the industry strand offered up a range of talks throughtout the three-day event, including keynotes investigating the use of copyright in the age of AI and an onstage conversation with exec producer Sam Lavender.
“It’s the busiest year we’ve ever had,” says Bennett. “Every session was jam packed and this year we also had our biggest cohort of talent through our talent labs. We had a lot of decision makers coming in and seeing this talent that they’ve never heard of before, with really interesting and great ideas and new voices.
“The focus in previous years used to be about the filmmakers and people attending the festival for the film program and I think we’ve kind of rejigged that and that’s why it’s catapulted itself so massively over the last couple of years – because we’re catering for the entire industry now and trying to bring in new talent, new voices and showcase Scotland and the UK as best as possible.”
This year’s Glasgow Film Festival had one of its biggest lineups to date with stars such as Toni Collette, Jessica Lange, Ed Harris, James McAvoy and Tim Roth all touching down in the Scottish city for the 12-day event.
