Chichester International Film Festival

It doesn't necessarily get any easier, says festival director Walter Francisco as he offers his third Chichester International Film Festival.

But certainly the confidence grows, and he is delighted with the programme which has come together, “15 days of extraordinary film-making” showcasing the “very best of world cinema” (August 7-23).

“In the first year I guess I was a little bit greener with approaching the distributors and how much you can push but I now feel a lot more confident,” Walter says. “These are distributors that have got films that they want to play at places like the London Film Festival or Venice or Cannes but here we are trying to get the best films too and the fact is we are a cherished little festival. People come along to us and they just love it. They can see that this is a festival dedicated to showing really, really good films. We don't go for the glitz and the glamour that a lot of other festivals pride themselves on. For us that's just by the by. For us it is all about coming up with the very best films.

“We love film and we want everybody to see interesting films from around the world including the UK. A lot of people think there's going to be lots of films from Japan or Sweden and subtitles and subtitles and subtitles, but I would say that more than half the films that we have got are English-speaking films.”

And the great thing is, as Walter says, film is actually the most collaborative art form: “You watch something like The Odyssey and you've got something like ten minutes of credits at the end. There are so many people involved in making a film.”

And it's that sense of community you get at the Chichester Cinema.

“I would not say we're back to the numbers that we had before the pandemic, the 2019 numbers. That was a huge peak. That was not normal at that time but then Covid happened and everybody got Netflix and other streaming options. But slowly things have come back and I would say we're getting near to our numbers before which is great for us because we were selling out.”

And all this at a time which is great for the smaller cinemas generally, the ones that offer the more intimate experience: “We have only got 115 seats but actually I think that's a benefit. The multiplexes have got much larger auditoriums and they show a film many more times than we do but you can be in there and be virtually alone. Whereas we always tend to get a really good number of people and they have a much greater experience of being together.”

And it's in that context that the film festival this year has come together really nicely: “You can struggle to find the films that you want and when you want them and you can struggle to put together various strands that you have but then when you look at it all, when it has all come together, you realise just how good it looks.”

The film festival opens with its now traditional open-air screenings in Priory Park.

Running from August 7-9, audiences can enjoy classics including Star Wars: A New Hope, Pretty Woman, Babe, Jurassic Park and 2025 musical Song Sung Blue.

“The weekend of open-air screenings launches a programme that journeys across genres, generations and continents before concluding with Pedro Almodóvar’s eagerly anticipated new comedy-drama Bitter Christmas at the festival’s closing gala.”

Following its successful debut last year, the Lumiere, an 80-seat mobile cinema at Chichester Cinema, returns for a second festival, hosting almost half of this year’s programme and creating a vibrant festival hub in the heart of Chichester.

For the full programme and ticket information, visit the Chichester International Film Festival website at https://chichesterfilmfestival.co.uk/