FrightFest: Beneath the Dark Heart of Cinema

Director: Chris Collier

Year: 2023

Title (Year) Director. Place is a documentary in the celebratory style of Free Cinema, displaying an intimate portrait of Alan Goble, an obsessed octogenarian with many interests but one passion: to detail, every film ever made anywhere in the world from the earliest days of cinema to the present. Now a widower, he reflects on his effortful accomplishment, which has been awarded a Guinness Record as the world's largest film-related database. We also observe him in a moment of relaxation, watching over his garden, rewilded more than forty years ago, where, every evening, generations of badgers snuffle for food, and fox cubs play in the long grass. And, through his own movies, we can observe his progress, from a Saturday morning cinema-going childhood through work and marriage to his solitary existence in a book-lined home, where he continues to find solace in his archival activities. It offers the story of his and our time through a close-up view of an unusual, extraordinary, and individual life.

Director: Hannah Berryman

Year: 2024

A landmark feature documentary about astronaut Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot and command the Space Shuttle.<br /> Eileen’s incredible journey starts with her smalltown beginnings, sees her smash through many glass ceilings, and culminates in four dramatic space shuttle missions, the last being possibly the most dangerous and most important of them all.<br /> At its heart the film is the moving human drama of one family, where a mother’s extraordinary career takes us straight to the big philosophical question of what is the level of acceptable risk in human endeavour? <br /> This film celebrates Commander Collins’ trailblazing NASA career which opened the way for women to become spacecraft pilots and commanders, and proved a perfect riposte to a previous generation of male astronauts who thought there was no place for women to lead the way in space. <br /> Official Selection DOC NYC 2024 - World premiere<br /> Official Selection CPH:DOX 2025 - European premiere

Director: Chris Leslie

Year: 2025

In the divided town of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, a once renowned National Monument and Cemetery honouring young WWII partisan fighters is being destroyed by neo-fascist forces.<br /> <br /> While most of the town dismiss it as a relic of communism and an enemy monument, a small group of determined relatives embark on a poignant quest to preserve their loved ones’ memories amid the ruins. <br /> Official Selection Sarajevo Film Festival 2025