From a tiny room in a pub to celebrating its best year yet, Rhiannon Dunbar meets the man behind the Beeston Film Festival.
When John Currie was having a ‘typical midlife crisis’, as a busy father of five he found he had lost track of himself and wanted to bring creativity back into his life.
So he made a film, saying ‘how hard can it be’?.
Go With God had its first festival appearance at a pub in Dublin, leaving John inspired, and eleven years ago in 2014, the Beeston Film Festival (BFF) was born.
John, 61, thinks that the media often skews the news in a way which creates serious divides between people, but he believes cinema is a solution.
He also says that a key concept he focussed on when developing the festival was around breaking into the film industry.
And putting an emphasis on his local community, allowing them to play a leading role in the structure of the festival.
John says: “The local community, Beestonians, pick the films at the Beeston Film Festival.
“It’s a local selection team.
“We have an international jury but they look at the films nominated by the local people.
“And I wanted to break through that barrier and give people that sense of ownership.”
The Beeston Film Festival is now BIFA (British Independent Film Awards) accredited, as well as being in Film Freeway’s top 100 film festivals.
John says this credibility and acknowledgment is what makes the festival improve year upon year, with this year having the best selection of films since the festival’s creation.
John says: “In terms of the quality of films, it was the best collection of films we’ve had.
“More colloquially, every one was a banger.”
Ciaran Shea, 27, assistant manager of Beeston Film Festival agrees that the local people are the backbone of the event.
He says: “John said something to me that every time I think about this festival, every time we think about where it’s going, it pops into my head.
“It’s that the films are selected by local people for an international audience.
“The team behind it, most of them are local.”
He added that whilst some of the team involved have since moved away or live in another part of the country, the majority of them live ‘on the doorstep’ and give all of their commitment and love to the festival.
And the fact that Beeston Film Festival prioritises it’s local community is what separates it from all of the others and entices people to be involved.
He said: “I feel like they feel wholly part of it.
“They are, they’re the fabric of this thing, they really are.
“It’s vital.
“It’s what makes this festival what it is and unlike the others.”
The festival attracts a wide range of film-goers, filmmakers and industry professionals from all over the world.
Gino Van Hecke, 55, travels all the way from Belgium to Beeston each year to attend the prestigious festival.
Gino, a film distributor and jury member at BFF, says it was a chance meeting with John eleven years ago which kickstarted his involvement in the local event.
The pair met at another film festival in India where John expressed his need for more jury members to take part.
In the first year of the festival, Gino watched all of the entries and gave his votes before even discussing attending the festival itself.
And despite John telling him that they weren’t really inviting people that first year to attend, Gino went regardless to show his support.
He says: “The first time I came over it was in the White Lion pub just across the street.
“So when I came over, I was a bit surprised because it was in a pub, and I had already been going for a couple of years to Cannes, to Berlin, to LA, to big film festivals.”
He added that, despite the smaller space and scale of the event, the atmosphere was so strong that he was compelled to revisit and be involved each year.
And Gino believes the move from the White Lion pub to the Arc Cinema was the ‘boost’ the festival needed to keep improving.
He says: “I think if we’d have stayed at the pub it wouldn’t have been as big as it is already now.
“It’s still improving every year and every year there’s manty more directors showing up, more producers showing up.
Gino added that he enjoys seeing the amount of people who turn up to the festival to attend the screenings, Q&As and workshop sessions because this keeps the cycle of networking and connecting going, with friends both old and new.
Stuart Wright, 53, says this is his first year as a jury member for Beeston Film Festival.
Stuart, a screenwriter and former magazine journalist, moved from London to Beeston at the end of 2024 and began his search for film related events soon after, where he came across BFF.
He says that while the festival is not as big as its international counterparts, he enjoys the excitement of being involved in the whole process from ranking the movies to seeing them on the big screen – where ‘a film is meant to be shown’.
Stuart agrees that the new venue, at the Arc Cinema, has been vital to the growing success of the festival, and he stresses the importance of in-person events for filmmakers and industry professionals.
He says: “It’s great that the cinema is part of the package.
“The one thing that we experienced during COVID, I remember speaking to the producer about this, she was saying that when we couldn’t go to festivals it felt like we were doing this work for nothing.
“Because outside of the Hollywood blockbusters people are making movies at an independent level and not making loads of money.
“So part of it is the kudos, it’s the sharing with other people, and a festival is that opportunity.”
Eleven years on, the Beeston Film Festival is reaching new heights and constantly evolving to create a supportive community for filmmakers and film-goers alike.
And submissions are open for next year’s festival, with around 60 entries having been received to date.
Now, the team prepare for another year of work and dedication to bring Hollywood to Beeston yet again.
To find out more about the winners of the Beeston Film Festival 2025, see the video below.
