Manchester Film Festival

Once again Manchester Film Festival will take place over a full week from 12th-20th March at the Odeon, Great Northern with a line-up of films from around the world.

Over 130 films will screen all playing in Manchester for the very first time. Eighty of the selected films are from the U.K.

There will be twenty seven world premieres and seventy four U.K. premieres across the festival and many of the filmmakers will be in attendance to take part in Q&A sessions after the screenings.

The festival will also host the Manchester premieres of award winners from Cannes and BFI London.

Winner of the prestigious Cannes Grand Prix award COMPARTMENT NUMBER 6 will play on Sunday 13th March.

Psychological drama NITRAM, winner of Best Actor at Cannes, will make its Manchester bow on Monday 14th March.

Winner of Best Film at the BFI London Film Festival, HIT THE ROAD, will screen on Tuesday 15th March.

Documentary BISPING: The Michael Bisping Story, about Clitheroe born former UFC champion Michael Bisping, will have its UK Premiere on Monday 14th March.

Further UK films having World premieres at the festival include GOD’S PETTING YOU, a dark and twisted comedy that explores the depths and depravity of the Brighton underworld.

Documentary SILVER SPITFIRE: THE LONGEST FLIGHT, about a British pilot and his team attempting a dangerous, world-first circumnavigation of the Earth in an 80-year-old vintage World War II fighter.

The talent of the North West filmmakers will  be on display with TWO sessions of North West Shorts on Tuesday 15th March and Sunday 20th March.

Manchester born Natalie Kennedy makes her feature directorial debut with the Black Mirror-esque BLANK, about a writer who enlists an A.I. to help with her writer’s block.  Kennedy has previously been nominated for the prestigious Manchester Theatre Awards for her production ‘Parents Without Children’.

Playing on Sunday 13th March is the Udo Kier starring comedy, SWAN SONG (not the Apple TV film). Kier gives the performance of his career as a flamboyant hairdresser who embarks on an odyssey across his small town to style a dead woman's hair for her funeral.