45th edition of the festival with eleven days of screenings, including the opening night 'I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning', the Palme d'Or winner 'Fjord' and a free Family Film Festival.
The Cambridge Film Festival returns to Cambridge Arts Picturehouse on Thursday 22 October, running for eleven days through to Sunday 1 November. This is the 45th edition, with almost 100 films from more than 25 countries. While the Arts Picturehouse at 38-39 St Andrew's Street is the main hub, screenings will also run at other venues across the city, so you'll be popping around more than one screen over the course of the festival.
Opening night is I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning on Thursday 22 October at 8.20pm. From there, the programme pulls in a wide range: the Palme d'Or winner Fjord, Martin McDonagh's Wild Horse Nine, and The Debut from Jesse Eisenberg. There's a 35th-anniversary screening of Thelma & Louise for those who want something they've seen before, and a free Family Film Festival featuring Wicked, Beauty and the Beast and Little Women.
It's a long-running institution here. The festival started in 1977 at the Arts Cinema in Market Passage, opening with Akira Kurosawa's Dodes'ka-den and Luchino Visconti's Conversation Piece. A Satyajit Ray retrospective a year later set the tradition of retrospective strands that's continued ever since. For nearly four decades, director Tony Jones shaped the festival; he stepped down in 2019 and received the first CFF Outstanding Contribution to Cinema Award.
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It's also built a reputation for UK premieres ahead of the rest of the country. Reservoir Dogs and The Best Intentions both played here in 1992, the Three Colours trilogy in 1994, Spirited Away in 2003, and Woody Allen's Blue Jasmine in 2013. Guests have included Wim Wenders, Cate Blanchett, Julie Delpy, Terry Gilliam, Ken Loach and Peter Greenaway. The festival is run by the Cambridge Film Trust with the BFI as main funder, and it's BAFTA- and BIFA-qualifying. Beyond the screenings, there's the CFF Youth Lab for 16-24-year-olds, the CFF Reel Voices mentoring scheme with Anglia Ruskin University, and an Industry Day.
