Scores & Awards

That was quite an Anniversary!

Thank you to all of you who came to Keswick last weekend to make it such an enjoyable weekend. It is always lovely to see people renewing acquaintanceships 12 months on – and to welcome so many new faces to KFF.

There was an incredible range of films on offer, which made it hard to choose at times – and the scores reflected the quality of the films in the programme.

Eventually, it was The Marching Band that took the audience award – the third consecutive year that a film at Rheged has taken the prize. The Monk and the Gun wasn’t far behind. You can see the Top 15 films here on the website.

The Ospreys continue to amaze with their demonstration of film-making prowess. The selection gets better each year – and what a treat to have Ian Picken, KFF’s first Festival Director, to announce the Audience Award was won by Stuart Armstrong for Lay-by. Harvey Greenfield director Jonnie Howard presented the Student Award to Asa Pegler for It Get's Better and the Open Award went to Juliet Klottrup for Travelling Home, which if you missed can now be seen on the Nowness platform.

Audience Award & Scores

Well, what a weekend that was!

There were some surprise hits, as always – My Sailor, My Love was really popular as was Ajoomma. Io Capitano was gripping. The Awards contenders did some heavy lifting too, with The Zone of Interest and American Fiction both scoring well. For a while it looked as if The Taste of Things would take the Audience Award but on Sunday morning a small-ish audience at Rheged were blown away by Tótem, scoring it at 89.7% - a worthy winner.

For once a documentary didn’t get the highest score, but Mayor, Four Daughters and Scala!!! were all well-received.

The full results are on the website but here is the top 10:

1. Totem - 89.6
2. The Taste of Things - 86.7
3. Mayor - 86.6
4. American Fiction - 86.3
5. Io Capitano - 84.1
6. My Sailor, My Love - 81.4
7. Four Daughters - 81.2
8. The Zone of Interest  - 76.9
9. Ajoomma - 76.8
10. Scala!!!  - 73.4

Osprey Short Film Awards 2023

Our judges have selected 10 films for the 2023 Osprey Short Film Awards which will be screened at the Theatre By The Lake on Saturday 25th February from 2pm. There'll be a chance to vote for the audience award on the day and we hope to be joined by directors Sarah Beddington (Fadia's Tree, showing before the Ospreys at 11am) and Hassan Nazer (Winners, Friday 24th at 9pm) to announce the winners.

The films all have a link to Cumbria and the selection includes animations, documentaries, dramas and comedies. Expect to see a flatulent wolf cub, mysterious strangers, explorations of memory through sound, running a Wainwright, dancing in nature, life contemplations, memories from artist Kurt Schwitters, an important look at virtue signalling and the work of the Wild Ennerdale partnership.

More details on all of the films can be found on our Shorts page.

Osprey Short Film Award Winners

There may not have been a Keswick Film Festival in 2021 but the Osprey Short Film Awards still went ahead. Entries for the competition were invited back in March 2020 and despite the difficulties of working for much of the year with lockdown restrictions Cumbrian filmmakers responded magnificently in both the Student and Open categories. 

The 12 shortlisted films were shown at the Alhambra on the 23rd October and prizes were awarded to Shadow Of The Mountain by Simon Phelps in the Open category and The Love Song Of T. S. Eliot by Kitty Handley in the Student category.

Shadow Of The Mountain

The Love Song Of T.S Eliot

We are now accepting entries for the 2022 Festival due to take place 24-27 March, for more details please see our FilmFreeway page.

2020 Audience Awards

In true style, the KFF audience asserted its independence by choosing The Personal History of David Copperfield as its favourite feature film, ahead of big hitters like Parasite and Portrait of a Lady on Fire – and who could argue with such a joyous choice?

The Festival always throws up surprises and Amanda and No Fathers in Kashmir were unexpected pleasures – the latter made more so by the arrival of its star Zara La Peta Webb, along with her family.

The audience did however follow convention in selecting For Sama as the best documentary, with a stunning score of 96.88% - our highest ever score.

Audience Awards – Feature Films

• The Personal History of David Copperfield 85.84%
• Amanda 84.82%
• No Fathers in Kashmir 83.42%
• So Long My Son 82.48%
• Portrait of a Lady on Fire 81.33%
• Parasite 80.00%

Audience Awards – Documentaries

• For Sama 96.88%
• The Kingmaker 83.33%
• The Cordillera of Dreams 79.71%
• Derrière Les Fronts 69.95%

2020 Osprey Short Film Award Winners

More than 100 people came along to the Alhambra on Saturday afternoon to watch a selection of short films. Directors Richard Heap and Mike Tweddle, whose films opened the festival on Thursday evening, handed out the prizes.

The audience selected CROSS by Gillian Harker for the Audience Award and the Judges awarded their prizes to LEARNER by the Signal Film and Media BFI Film Academy group in the Student category and A PINK CHRISTMAS by Adam Ibbotson in the Open category.

Many thanks to all who came along and to the film makers for creating an amazing selection of films.

Audience Scores - Top 3s

We've started adding up all of the audience votes and can now reveal the top 3 feature films and documentaries at the 20th Keswick Film Festival.

Feature Film

 

Green Book - 91%

The Guilty - 87%

Jellyfish - 86%

Documentaries

Nae Pasaran - 92%

Citizenfour - 91%

Another Day of Life - 90%

Award Winners At Keswick Film Festival

Each year KFF offers an Audience Award for the best of the current crop of films, both features and documentaries based on audience ratings.

In terms of feature films, it was no surprise that Three Billboards topped the poll, although it is nice to see a film that actually lives up to the hype. Edie and A Fantastic Woman were worthy runners up – vastly different and so enjoyable.

There was a bumper crop of documentaries this year, all of which were well received. It was wonderful to see new faces at the Festival attracted by Our Last Tango and the positive response to Human Flow  and to Demain is cause for hope. Amazingly Our Last Tango and Human Flow both scored 90.63% followed by Demain with 86.2%.

Scores for all the films are now available on the website.

The 10th Osprey Short Film Awards took place on the Saturday at the Festival. The Judges Prize went to Best Of Three, created by a group of 16-19 year olds as part of the BFI Film Academy with Signal Film and Media. The Audience Award went to The Bob Graham Round: Running the Fells with Friends by Kaleel Zibe. Congratulations to all the filmmakers who took part.

Festival Awards

We asked film critics Matt Glasby, Karen Krizanovich and Ali Catterall to nominate a film for the inaugural Keswick Film Festival's Critic's Award. On Saturday we showed Matt's choice of Son Of Saul, Karen's selection of Arrival and ended the night with Ali's late night screening of Raw. On Sunday Matt, Karen and Ali put forward their cases for their films, the audience vote was combined with Saturday's rating and we declared Arrival the winner.

The Osprey Short Film Awards also took place on Saturday and both the Judges Award and the Audience Award went to A Shepherd's Hand. This 5 minute film directed by Richard Berry and Jago Miller is based on a poem written by Geoff Cox following his attempt at the endurance run of the Joss Naylor Lakeland Challenge.

Writer (and endurance runner) Geoff Cox with the Osprey prize certificates

We're still counting all the votes for the Audience Award for new films at the festival but should have the results soon.

Osprey Winners

More than a hundred people came to The Alhambra to watch the Osprey Short Films this afternoon. The winner of the the young category was Matthew Wood's Perception. The judges and audience agreed and A Bit More Sleep by True Productions won the prize in the open category and the audience award. Congratulations to all the film-makers and thanks to everybody who came and made it a great event.