Franglais27 Tales

*I was provided with a goodie bag for the purposes of this article and all opinions are my own

Organised by the Bluebird Pictures production company, the World Cinema Film Festival is now celebrating its third edition. The World Cinema Film Festival was created by the CEO of Bluebird Pictures, Joelle Mae David, in 2018 and aims to provide access, resources and opportunities to emerging filmmakers worldwide.

The festival would usually be occurring in London and LA but, as has been the case for so many film festivals in 2020, it will be occurring online for this year. The festival is taking place across two days, 29 and 30 August 2020, and will present a curated programme of short films, documentary and some animation. Within the programme there will be industry talks and even the opportunity to participate in a competition to create a film of one minute or less to submit through Twitter. It will certainly be interesting to see the shortlisted competition entries!

As the videos have been pre-recorded, this provides that option to pause and watch the programme at your leisure. Each video is introduced and on Day 1, the introduction was given by Naomi Julien, a presenter of the festival. However, the timings of the respective films have not been provided, which may have been preferable, as each day’s programme is a continuous video and each film is interspersed with a Q&A with film industry professionals, such as cinematographer Rina Yang and writer/ director Koby Adom.

Registration for the festival was free and those fortunate to have purchased a limited ‘at home’ ticket will also have received a goodie bag. The goodie bag includes a lightweight, grey tote bag which is ideal for attending the film festival in the future. Within the bag is a film festival t-shirt and there are a range of snacks to enjoy whilst watching each day’s programming. I was certainly pleased to see a bag of apple Liobites fruit crisps in there, which were my favourite in my earlier review of Liobites.

The goodie bag also comprises other vegan and dairy free snacks such as Fava Beans from Makan Snacks, a chocolate drink from Bright Barley, a chocolate bar from Raw Halo and fruit and nut bites from Love Vegan. I always recall quickly moving from watching one film to another during film festivals and so scrumptious goodie bags such as this would certainly be appreciated! Hopefully, the goodie bags will continue when the festival returns to an ‘in person’ format.

As for the films, here are a few from each day’s programming that sound intriguing:

Day 1

A Very Brit(ish) Voice is directed by Serendipity and Jaha Browne and explores the journey of some of the individuals that travelled to the UK and settled in Leicester as part of the Windrush movement. It has been awarded with the Documentary Winner (Barking and Dagenham) prize.

Remember the Rain That Made Your Corn Grow portrays the Haitian culture that exists within Montreal. The film therefore highlights the influence of Haitian culture on Montreal’s cultural scene within food, music and is directed by Xavier Girard Lachaîne.

Day 2

Roots is directed by Hussina Raja and looks at the cultural assimilation process when embedded within a different country. The film follows a couple and their struggles to belong and receive acceptance with the inevitable adjustments that this involves over time.

Clara’s Room is directed by Pippa Molony and shot from Clara’s bedroom. The audience is therefore provided with a voyeuristic view of those angst inducing moments, romantic encounters, beauty rituals and stressful family moments; all of which would usually remain behind closed doors.

Further details of the World Cinema Film Festival can be accessed here.