TheJackSmit.com at the 2024 Lytham International Film Festival

 

August Bank Holiday meant only one thing - the mother of all storms - but also the second edition of a film festival that’s making waves in the North and far beyond. LYIFF returned to the Lowther Pavilion, with 105 submissions from across the globe, 15 world premieres, 3 ‘foot in the door’ workshops for aspiring filmmakers, and plenty of opportunities to meet the talent behind the films in competition. As usual, here at TheJackSmit.com we’re quite proud of the North, so it is always a joy to be able to cover the event, and actually talk to the movers and shakers in this industry.

HERE’S SOMETHING WE MADE EARLIER: LYIFF becomes the first festival to feature on The Journal

Usually we’d have a huge written piece on all of the highlights when it comes to the shorts - but we doubled our coverage to see 35 of the 105 selections across features, shorts and music videos in the 2024 festival. So, naturally… we went all out and added The Journal to the mix. Seeing as we made the episode before knowledge of the award winners came through to Smit HQ - we had to wait to be able to name them. So without any further delay, here are this year’s winners, all films you should 100% have a read up about.

THE LYIFF AWARDS 2024

• BEST FEATURE: The Way to Happiness (dir: Nicolas Steil)
• BEST SHORT: Good Boy (dir: Tom Stuart)
• BEST REGIONAL FILM (sponsored by Chris Allen Mazda): Autonomous Winter Shelter (dir: Dean Cooper)
• BEST ACTOR: Tillman Eckardt (Once and For Real)
• BEST ACTRESS: Daria Panchenko (A Day in February)
• BEST DIRECTOR: Parker Croft (As Easy As Closing Your Eyes)
• BEST SCREENPLAY: Baby On Board (Stephen Volk)
• BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY: The Last Embrace (Paul Meyers, dir: Diego Contreras)
• BEST EDITING: [Insert Short Film Title] (dir: Kory Orban)
• BEST VFX: Wild Summon (Saul Freed, dir: Karni Arieli & Saul Freed)
• BEST ORIGINAL SCORE - Judged by John Parr (best known for St Elmo’s Fire [Man in Motion], and LYIFF 23 winning short Unconquered): The First Time I Never Met You (Joseph Alexander, dir: Eric Kole)
• BEST MUSIC VIDEO - Judged by John Parr: You Feel It Too (Moxy the Band)
• LYIFF CREATIVITY AWARD: Sound 7406 (dir: Goran Sporcic)
• BEST COMEDY: The Snip (dir: Ben S. Hyland)
• BEST AFTER DARK (Horror/Thriller): Rain, Rain, Go Away (dir: Sebastiano Pupino)
• BEST EXPERIMENTAL: Ava (dir: Stella Brajterman)
• BEST ANIMATION: Nerd (dir: Gus Menese)
• BEST FACTUAL: Beyond the Beach: The Hell and the Hope (dir: Graeme Scott & Buddy Squires)
• BEST DRAMA: In 100 Years (dir: Hektor Hornsleth)
• BEST FIRST TIME DIRECTOR: Kathryn Georghiou (Changing Tides)
• LYIFF RISING STAR: Csnad Noll (dir: The Files - aged just 15 and showcasing his debut short at the Festival, judges have identified him as a talent to watch in the future)

During our day on site, I got to chat with Kathryn Georghiou (director of Changing Tides), Johnny Herbin (director of Cakes!), Rosie Fox (writer/composer/star of Bonny Chip) and Goran Sporcic (director of Sound 7406) at the various Q&As and between screenings, and this is what makes LYIFF unique- as one minute you can literally be sat with the filmmakers, talking shop about the business, before seeing their work on the big screen. It’s a proper family vibe, and I know a lot of the people who attended the festival can attest to that.

WORKSHOPS FOR THE FUTURE

New for this edition was the LYIFF Foot in the Door programme, a way for the filmmakers of the future to learn from those involved in the festival’s selections. On the Friday, festival director (and also the director of The Renata Road) Ed Greenberg lead a workshop on exactly what it takes to produce a quality short film, on any budget, that will do well on the festival circuit - including all the ways to get funding, in a 45 minute workshop that ended up going an hour because there was so much valuable information on offer. On the Saturday, the aspiring screenwriters got to talk to filmmaker and author Andrew David Barker about writing for the short form, ahead of a screening of his short film Baby on Board later that evening. Then on the Sunday morning, Richard Albiston gave the workshop most filmmakers want to hear: the inside line on getting your film seen and distributed. Richard knows his onions about all this, as owner of The Cannon Film Company (as well as being the protege of the late Menahem Golan), he has an eye for identifying promising low budget films that will do big things internationally, as well as being a filmmaker in his own right.

2025 AND BEYOND: Northern Film Matters

Artists impression of the Lowther Pavilion’s new Education Centre and Studio, due to open April 2025

Speaking to the team at the festival, as well as staff at the Lowther Pavilion, the next two years for LYIFF are going to see some serious evolution - all being well, next April the Pavilion will open their Education Centre and Studio, providing a second indoor venue to supplement the main 450 seater screen and The Tent, as it has become known. There is a serious passion amongst everyone involved in putting it on to take this as big, and as far-reaching as it can, just like the music festival held on Lytham’s promenade every July has done since 2015.

All of these chats have prompted us here at TheJackSmit.com to start developing a very special little strand, which we’ll reveal more about once submissions open for next year’s festival - that hashtag in the Journal is a small hint as to what it’s called…

Submissions for LYIFF 2025 open on FilmFreeway.com/LYIFF on September 1st.