2025 Festival

We are now accepting entries for the Osprey Short Film Awards at the 25th Keswick Film Festival in March.

To be considered for the awards a film must be under 10 minutes and have a significant connection to Cumbria. Our panel of judges select the best entries to show the the Festival where the winners will be announced.

For full details on how to enter please visit our FilmFreeway page.

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

Congratulations to all of the short films that were screened at the Theatre By The Lake on Saturday afternoon. 

David and Michael Groom, the brothers behind Between The Lights which opened the Festival to a sold out full house on Thursday, announced the winners. The Student Prize (which is for any film made by students or film makers under the age of 19) went to MISJUDGED. Crafted by the creative minds of first-time filmmakers aged 8-11 at Signal Starters it features a plasticine seagull and a tentacled sea-witch who come together to share tales of hasty judgments.

Signal Film & Media were also behind WISHBONE which picked up the judges prize in the Open category and the Audience Award voted for by the 100 plus people who came along to watch the films. This film is a heartfelt journey through the life of a determined Barrovian living on Duke Street and you can now watch it for free here: https://signalfilmandmedia.com/wishbone/

Many thanks also to Caris Rianne from Rianne Pictures and the Women X Film Festival who joined the judging panel this year and did a brilliant job of hosting the event on Saturday and to all the team at the Theatre for getting the films on the big screen.