The UK’s largest festival for young, emerging filmmakers, the BFI Future Film Festival 2025 returns from 20 February – 6 March with a hybrid format that maintains a tradition of live and in-person screenings and events at BFI Southbank (20 – 23 February) alongside a globally accessible online programme, kindly supported by Main Sponsors Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery’s CrewHQ. For the second year, the festival will also include a UK-wide programme in collaboration with BFI Film Academy delivery partners, with screenings and events echoing the spirit of the BFI Future Film Festival providing young people across the country a chance to participate in the UK’s largest festival for budding screen creatives.
This year’s BFI Future Film Festival will include four jam-packed days at BFI Southbank filled with masterclasses, workshops, screenings, and networking opportunities, with events programmed across three strands: Storytelling, Business of Film and Career Ladder. With a host of industry experts and screen creatives leading the sessions, both online and in-person, the BFI Future Film Festival is the best way for filmmakers aged 16 to 25, across the UK and beyond, to break into the screen industries. The full industry programme will be unveiled on 22 January, with tickets available from 23 January.
Today the BFI is pleased to announce the film programme for the BFI Future Film Festival 2025, which will once again be screened at BFI Southbank from 20 – 23 February and made available to view for free worldwide on the BFI YouTube channel from 20 February – 6 March, alongside screenings of select films UK-wide. Separated into nine strands – The City, Coming of Age, Digital, Family, Identities, Mortality, Our Planet, Relationships, and Surreal – the film programme is a collection of fifty-four shorts by talented filmmakers from across the globe, selected by the Festival team and the BFI Film Academy Young Programmers from more than 1100 submissions. All of the films screening throughout this year’s BFI Future Film Festival will be in contention for the prestigious BFI Future Film Festival Awards. The nominees will be announced soon, alongside the juries of industry experts who will judge each category. The winners will be revealed on 23 February at BFI Southbank.
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The City – These films return our attention to our diverse urban environments, and ask us what stories we are missing amongst their havoc.
AS PECKHAM AS (Tom Blackman, UK 2024)
An ode to Peckham imbued with the neighbourhood’s essence, accompanied by a poem written and performed by Tyreece Asamoah.
IF THIS WERE PURGATORY (Honey Birch, UK 2024)
From gossip to identity, politics and romance; follow a group of friends to the club and eavesdrop on the numerous voices in a queer club queue.
NEXT STOP IS. . . (Stephen Han, USA 2022)
A filmic letter to the New York subway – the lifeline of the city, which offers space for community and creativity while simultaneously acting as a site for surveillance, distortion and hurt.
PARTITION (Matthew Tan, UAE 2024)
Migrant workers in the UAE, 90% of the country’s population, occupy small apartments with subdivided rooms as we see what their lives are like.
REBIRTH (Joel Claudio, UK 2024)
A once vibrant neighbourhood is sent into chaos by a tragedy in the community. Two brothers are caught up in the protest, before an ethereal figure arrives embodying the grief of the people.
THE GOLDEN POSTBOX (Julia Mervis, UK 2024)
Members of the public ruminate on the impact of Sheffield’s golden postbox on the local community, a souvenir from the fever dream that was the year 2012.
WE’RE NOT IN ESSEX ANYMORE (Grac Talbot, UK 2024)
A group of friends travel from the London suburbs into the city in this mixed media homage to The Wizard of Oz, exploring themes of female friendship and escapism along the way.
Coming of Age – From university induction rituals to your first period, these films centre, and challenge, the significance we attach to growing older.
A FEW MORE MINUTES, PLEASE (Dylan Scott, UK 2024)
A quiet nineteen-year-old struggles to order at a restaurant, forcing him to grapple with the building pressure to choose a purpose in life even as he can’t choose from a menu.
BIG DEAL (Isabella Thompson, UK 2024)
On a quest to smoke weed before leaving for university, two best friends question their relationship, their anxieties about growing up. . . and how to properly roll a joint.
HEAVY (Eve Grant, UK 2024)
A trip to the local supermarket to buy sanitary products forces an awkward and uncomfortable conversation between a teenage girl and her clueless father.
HOT YOUNG GEEK SEEKS BLOOD-SUCKING FREAK (Heath Virgoe, UK 2024)
Max finds himself the online target of an angry vampire. Enlisting his roommate Ricky for help, the pair’s attempts at home defence are quickly complicated by the arrival of a forgotten pizza delivery.
MY EYES! (Magnus Hippe Brun, Denmark 2023)
Peer pressure and personal limits are put to the test when two game ‘witches’ set a group of new students an orientation week task deep in the woods.
RED LACE (Andrea Adame and Paula Trejo Espada, Spain 2024)
A young man enters a sinister and mysterious bakery where he must complete a rite of initiation in order to join the strange community of cake lovers who reside there.
WAITING FOR MARCUS (Sára Ní Eithir, UK 2024)
Tensions rise as two teenage girls get ready for a costume party while pushing each others’ buttons. Soon, they must face the disappointing nature of their friendship as well as their night out.
Digital – This collection delves into our increasingly frequent digital encounters, and the ever vanishing line between the real world and its cybernetic overlay.
ENDLESSLY HUNGRY (Prajvi Mandhani, UK 2024)
Entering a digital interface, the viewer follows the cursor as it travels across screens and windows, navigating blurred boundaries between political absurdity and reality.
ESC (Pamela Simoes Gomez and Olivia Timms, UK 2024)
An office rabbit’s monotonous and repetitive work life is forever changed by an encounter with a wild rabbit, prompting visions that send him further into a state of stress and turmoil.
LAST NIGHT IN IRL (Ola Adediji, UK 2024)
High tech contact lenses help Annu hide her face behind a filter, until a beautiful unadulterated stranger sparks her interest at a party.
OVER THERE (Shuqi Li, UK 2024)
A jobless woman sells her body to enter the digital world and seemingly thrive, but soon she discovers something unsettling about her new existence.
SINGULARITY (Conor Mullin, UK 2024)
After crash landing on a desolate planet with nothing but a satellite phone, an astronaut is left on hold as he waits for rescue.
Family – Dealing with the troubles and the joys that our nearest and dearest inspire, these films mine the richest seams of modern family life.
CHUCKS (Anum Ehtesham and Rafay Rockingson, Pakistan 2024)
A mother’s wish to fulfil her son’s dream of owning a pair of Chuck Taylors reveal the fragile threads of her double life. Would things ever be the same between the two of them?
DON’T FALL FROM GRACE (Carley Byers, USA 2024)
When Grace’s body is taken over by a mysterious entity that means her harm, her mother is desperate to break her free from the trance.
EVERY OTHER WEEKEND (James Naughton, Ireland 2024)
Desperate to escape from a routine of biweekly visits, a recently divorced father drags his two children camping to the west of Ireland.
PERIOD PARTY (Georgia Brogan, Australia 2024)
Bee puts on a party to celebrate the return of her period after a battle with anorexia. While the vagina cake melts, she comes to terms with the messiness of family and womanhood.
RALPH (Archie Rowell, UK 2023)
After the sudden loss of his mother, Ralph sits to look through the memories left behind of their cherished time together and finds one final message.
YOUR VOICE ONLY (Rana Wael Matar, Saudi Arabia 2023)
A Sudanese man working in an isolated horse stable in Dahban, Saudi Arabia, tries to contact his family after not being able to reach them in three months.
Identities – From conflicting national identities to our self-perception of gender, each of these works question how we are seen, and how this affects the way we see ourselves.
BY HEART (Jeffrey Lo, Taiwan 2024)
After being brought to Taiwan following her parents’ separation, Catherine attempts to hold on to her American identity by resisting the Confucian text she must memorise at school.
CHECK PLEASE (Shane Chung, USA 2024)
Dinner for two turns deadly when a Korean and a Korean-American fight over who gets to pay the check — and who gets to keep their honour.
EVERYTHING LOOKS SIMPLE FROM A DISTANCE (Conor Toner, Ireland 2024)
With tensions mounting in 1969 Northern Ireland, Noah looks for a higher purpose and decides that a trip to the moon may be the best route to peace.
I’M YOUR BABY (Fionnuala McCormack, Ireland 2023)
Inspired by the real-life experiences of Irish women, this film showcases the reality of female subjection and sexualisation, told through evocative text messages and intimate visuals.
ROAD TO 75 (Niya Taylor, UK 2024)
Showcasing the beauty and richness of Luton’s Caribbean culture, the town goes on a crucial journey towards commemorating the 75th anniversary of Windrush.
THE JOURNEY HOME (Noah Lei Underwood, UK 2023)
A creature considers its current bindings and finds them wanting in this ethereal meditation on the surreal quality of queer and intersectional realities.
THEIR ACCOUNTS (Hannah Kate Cameron Hunter, UK 2024)
Young people from Ardnamurchan share their thoughts on their home and their culture’s past, present, and future through interviews inspired by traditional oral storytelling.
Mortality – Piecing together the past memories of those we have loved and lost can be a difficult task, but these films do it with dexterity, understanding, and a hint of the comedic.
IVAN’S DEATH (Daniel Sherwood, USA 2024)
A judge faces his death and finds himself judging his own life’s actions in this surreal adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich.
MORPHES (Konstantinos Doxiadis, Greece 2024)
A man and a boy find themselves in a mysterious forest at night. Together, they must find their way towards the light.
THE DOGS (George Moore Chadwick, UK 2024)
After the collapse of human civilisation, an old dog faces up to his own mortality and the prospect of a new world.
THE FIFTH STEP (Alexandru Oita, Romania 2023)
A man survives incarceration by holding on to the memories of his imprisoned wife. Hoping to see her again upon his release, he soon realises that all he has left is the memory of their dance steps.
TYPE OF RAIN (Saskia Steinberg, UK 2025)
Following the untimely death of her closest friend, a young woman finally finds some comfort in the form of a new ally: cold water.
Our Planet – From flora to fauna, these works highlight the serenity of nature, while asking if this serenity might be slowly fading away.
CLAWS (Nim Longley, UK 2024)
A playful reimagining of the classic cat-and-bird chase, told through scans of paper cuts and collage brought to life through vivid animation.
HOW THE WORLD IS GOING TO END (Vladislav Motorichev, UK 2024)
Members of the UK public speculate about the world’s end, and whether there is anything we can do to stop it.
RED THUMB (Kolya Kishinsky and Geneva Huffman, USA 2024)
Intrigue turns to obsession in this stop motion animation when a gardener discovers a pulsating red plant in his yard. As it physically grows so does their connection, leading to a shocking climax.
REQUIEM (Holly Sharman, UK 2024)
A pregnant woman spirals into emotional disarray when faced with the prospect of birthing her child into a world of environmental ruin.
THE HIGHLANDS (Oskar Chu, UK 2024)
A poetic journey through the Scottish Highlands, capturing the raw beauty of an untamed land and the quiet tension of its transformation.
THE SILENCE AFTER THE STORM (Alina Rizwan, Pakistan 2024)
Floods have a devastating effect on education in Sindh, Pakistan, as told through the eyes of a young Kubargoth dreamer who rewrites his rain-soaked dreams.
Relationships – These films spotlight our romantic relationships, showing what happens when they break down, as well as how they can lift us back up again.
A NATURAL SADDEST (Sobae Kim, Korea 2024)
Bomb and Cherry’s unorthodox business venture of selling pearls is put at risk when the pair fall deeper in love, leading to pain and conflict.
ALMOST INTANGIBLE (Taraneh Esmailian, Iran 2024)
When they are asked to improvise during an audition, a husband and wife discover some uncomfortable truths about their relationship in the process.
BLUEPRINT (Lada Kopytova, UK 2024)
Cass and Ezra look back on their failed relationship, brought on by Cass’ tendency to write about her life and Ezra’s unwillingness to exist as a character in her stories.
LAST NIGHT (Oliver Zel, USA 2024)
In the relentless hustle of the New York dating scene, two eligible bachelors break free of the apps and take a chance on each other as a serial ghoster meets his match.
MISS ODD (Robyn Wisker-Stilling, UK 2024)
After her neighbour calls her “Miss Odd”, silent DJ Jolene’s vibrant world fades from pink to grey on her way to a date. . . But she has learnt the world’s melody, and now it’s time to embrace her own.
TFH! (Fraser Scott, UK 2024)
After waking up to discover they’re the last two humans left in Paisley following a mass alien abduction, friends Darren and Lu grow closer as they attempt to stay one step ahead of the threat.
Surreal – From the charming bathos of a sentient fan all the way to an entire universe transformed by music, these films feature a world in which nothing quite seems to make any sense.
A HOT SUMMER NIGHT (Hassan Hekmat Ravesh, Iran 2024)
On a scorching summer day, a rusty fan is betrayed by its owner and replaced with a newer model. Sparking jealousy and a need for justice, the fan seeks its revenge for this unforgivable crime.
IMAGINE THE AUDIENCE NAKED (Reuben Underwood, UK 2024)
Funk band Grog Machine walk out into the spotlight. They may have only just switched on their amps and kicked on their guitar pedals, but something is definitely wrong. . .
SPEAK NO EVIL (Chen Ma, UK 2023)
In a world of silence, where countless mouths are thrown into a bottomless black hole each day, one person looks to break free of this curse of censorship and find their voice.
UNRECOGNIZED CHARACTER DETECTED (Song Ye, China 2024)
Two alien organisms engage in a playful conflict across diverse territories, but all may not be as it seems. . .
ZIZZ (Manyu Zhao, UK 2024)
As a girl attempts to fall asleep, the noise from the city, the uncomfortable bed and her overactive brain conspire to stop her from getting into dreams.
