Our 2024-25 Season has now come to an end!
Thanks to everyone who supported us and came along to our films at the new venue of Chester Picturehouse. We increased our membership to 200 and showed ten films with an average audience of 95, the greatest being 127 for In The Mood For Love.
The Chester International Film Festival (CIFF)returned at Storyhouse, Chester, running from 21st March 2025 to 3rd April, showcasing a hand-picked selection of international film previews, locally curated short film programmes, special guest speakers, and unique cinematic adventures. Proudly produced in partnership with the University of Chester, and Storyhouse. Opening and closing receptions with thanks to VAIN.
2024/2025 Programme (with Audience ratings)
Part One (Autumn/Winter 2024)
19th September 2024 – The Promised Land (Denmark) 8.3
10th October 2024 – The Origin of Evil (France) 7.65
31st October 2024 – Sorcery (Chile) 6.7
21st November 2024 – Mami Wata (Nigeria) 6.5
12th December 2024 – The Good Boss (Spain) 7.76
The flyer for Part 1 of the season can be viewed here.
Part Two (Winter/Spring 2025)
9th January 2025 – All We Imagine As Light (India) 7.35
30th January 2025 – The Echo (Mexico) 7.82
20th February 2025 – In The Mood For Love (Hong Kong) 7.6
13th March 2025 – Crossing (Sweden/Turkey) 8.84
10th April 2025 – My Favourite Cake (Iran) 8.2
The flyer for Part 2 of the season can be viewed here.
Splitting the season into two parts allowed us to take advantage of obtaining more recent films from World Cinema, which remains the focus of our programme. We have a Film Programming Group of film society members who meet to discuss and agree on our final shortlist of films. These are then submitted to Picturehouse’s Senior Film Programmer who obtains the necessary screening licenses.
Membership and ticketing
As part of this new setup, Picturehouse cover all the venue and film licensing costs. We operate a Film Society membership, but at only £10 for the whole season! This allows our members to buy tickets for each film directly from Picturehouse at an exclusive cost of just £5 a time. Non-members are still welcome, but they would have to buy tickets at the full standard Picturehouse price (currently £10 plus any online booking fee)
‘I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring,’
David Bowie, 1997.