2016 sees the launch of the inaugural Birmingham Film Festival. Running from Friday November 25th until Sunday November 27th it will be open to all categories of film genres; from full length features, through to animated shorts. Within this wide remit there will be awards for local film-makers and young film-makers, as well as a special recognition award for film-makers who have overcome adversity.

A respected panel of judges will select winners for each of the 18 categories with the emphasis being on creativity, originality and technical talent. The awards well be presented at a ceremony to be held at a high-profile city centre venue on the evening of Saturday November 26th.

Throughout the weekend screenings of the best submissions will be shown at the festival hub, the Mockingbird Theatre in Digbeth’s Custard Factory, which itself is already home to a number of the city’s film production community.

Alongside the award ceremony and screenings there will be a number of support events in and around the Mockingbird Theatre and Bar which will be announced over the coming months.

In launching the event festival organiser, Gary Rogers said, “There is a lot of creativity in Birmingham and we want to showcase this to the world and also invite the international film-making community to Birmingham to screen their work. Many of the organising team have also experienced the challenge of securing public screenings of their work in the past, which is why we are supporting our younger, local film-makers by generating some much need publicity for them as part of the festival.”

The festival has opened for submissions and has already received over fifty entries and for the next few weeks entrants can take advantage of the “early-bird” submission fee.