Film programme announced for BFI Future Film Festival 2025
The festival for aspiring filmmakers aged 16 to 25 will be taking place in-venue at BFI Southbank, online globally for free, and in cinemas UK-wide from 20 February to 6 March.
The UK’s largest festival for young, emerging filmmakers, the BFI Future Film Festival 2025 returns from 20 February to 6 March with a hybrid format that maintains a tradition of live and in-person screenings and events at BFI Southbank (20 to 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 we are pleased to announce the film programme for the BFI Future Film Festival 2025, which will once again be screened at BFI Southbank from 20 to 23 February and made available to view for free worldwide on the BFI YouTube channel from 20 February to 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 54 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.