Swindon Film Festival

For a town better known for its magic roundabout than its movie scene, the Swindon Film Festival returns this year with a thoughtful array of new releases, documentaries, award nominees and family favourites.

For a town better
known for its magic roundabout than its movie scene, the Swindon Film Festival
returns this year with a thoughtful array of new releases, documentaries, award
nominees and family favourites.

Playing across Swindon and its surrounding towns and
villages, the festival is running from the 1^st to the 10^th
of March, and with tickets at £5 a pop there’s nothing to stop those local to
the area taking a breather from the town’s multiplexes and giving something
different a try.

Opening the festival at Swindon’s central library, Searching for Sugar Man follows two
South Africans tracking the fate of rock legend Rodriguez with startling
results. Director Malik Bendjelloul
has already scooped a Directors Guild award for the documentary, and it’s nominated
for at this year’s Academy Awards also.

Other programme highlights include awards season favourites Beasts of the Southern Wild and Rust And Bone (Main Picture), both with central leads
up for BAFTA and OSCAR nominations, and foreign gems The Hunt and Olivier
Nakache and Eric
Toledano’s critically
commended Untouchable.

For the blockbuster fanatic, Bond
number 23 Skyfall will be shown at St Michael’s Hall in Highworth and Joe
Wright’s lavish adaptation of Anna Karenina will be hosted at Royal Wootton Bassett
School.

Small visitors can enjoy Aardman animation The
Pirates! An Adventure with Scientists! with Hugh Grant, Martin Freeman and David Tennant providing
voice talent and Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, which was nominated for Best
Picture at the 2012 OSCARs.

As well as
screenings the English Heritage Archive are hosting a free evening exploring
the early days of flight with views of Swindon then and now, with a paper
aeroplane competition to boot. The festival will be examining the town’s
history through the Swindon Viewpoint and Britain from Above archives.
Throughout the festival they also will be showing A Portrait of Swindon, filmed
by Create Studios in 2012 to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

For full details of the festival, booking details and
further information, visit the festival homepage HERE