Borderlines Film Festival, the UK’s largest rural film festival, is back on Friday, February 28

Borderlines Film Festival, the UK’s largest rural film festival, is back on Friday, February 28 February, bringing cutting edge cinema to 23 venues across Herefordshire, Shropshire, Malvern and the Welsh Marches for the 23^rd year running.

 Borderlines differs from most film festivals. Rather than drawing audiences to a central location, it takes cinema out to audiences across a wide, predominantly rural area that covers four counties. 

Funding from the BFI Audience Projects Fund, awarding National Lottery funding, the Elmley Foundation and Hereford City Council enables the festival to spread its net widely within this sparsely populated part of the country.

 New venues for 2025 include All Stretton Village Hall in south Shropshire; the Old Picture House in Kington, Herefordshire, originally a Methodist chapel converted to a cinema in 1919, now lovingly restored; and Castlemorton Parish Hall in west Worcestershire.

The festival offers the opportunity to watch films in a variety of settings including, again this year, the Art Deco glory that is The Regal in Tenbury with its Tuscan frescos and alongside different communities.

 Naomi Vera-Sanso, Borderlines Festival Director, says, “As well as pushing our reach geographically, this year we are increasing our efforts to attract new and diverse audiences to watch films they want to see. To this end, we have appointed Community Engagement Coordinators who are busy forging partnerships with local organisations.

 “I’d like to thank everyone who plays the National Lottery. Without your support, we would not be able to put together a film festival of this size and quality.”

 Local connections abound in the 2025 programme. North Herefordshire raised, Oscar and BAFTA winning production designer, James Price, who won for his work on Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, starring Emma Stone, will come to Ludlow Assembly Rooms to give some insights into his craft. Borderlines is proud to have supported James’ first film Shell Shock back in 2010.

 There’s a reprise too for the Catcher Media’s engaging documentary about Hereford’s Cattle Market, Chewing the Cud. 

The tenth anniversary edition will include updated footage, and the filmmakers and interviewees will be present at The Courtyard Hereford for a Q&A.

Rural is certainly a strong theme for the 2025 Borderlines programme. As well as Chewing the Cud, there are films set in the countryside of Ireland (Bring Them Down), France (Holy Cow, Misericordia and When Autumn Falls), Italy (Vermiglio), Palestine (No Other Land), Tunisia (Red Path) and Mongolia (The Wolves Always Come at Night).

Comedy (The Crime is Mine, The Critic, Holy Cow, Misericordia, Sister Midnight, The Summer with Carmen, A Traveler's Needs, Two to One) and Music are the other two major themes for Borderlines 2025. 

The musical highlight has to be the screening at Malvern Theatres of 1927 film classic Sunrise: a Song of Two Humans with live accompaniment by two accomplished musicians: Festival regular Stephen Horne, adept at playing several instruments at the same time, alongside harpist Elizabeth-Jane Baldry.

 2024’s popular Mexican Film Noir collaboration with Film Noir UK is repeated with three outrageous melodramas featuring fabulous Cuban rumbera star, Ninón Sevilla: Adventuress, Take Me in your Arms and Victims of Sin. The festival is also screening the 1967 stylish neo-noir Point Blank, John Boorman’s Hollywood debut, and starring Lee Marvin whose centenary took place in 2024.

 The only film festival to be programmed by the Independent Cinema Office, this edition of the Festival has close to one third of the programme consisting of previews, films screening at the festival prior to their UK cinema release. 

Titles to look out for are La Cocina, described by Deadline as “’The Bear’ on steroids”; the extraordinary Sister Midnight, offbeat comedy switching to mock horror in a surreal, nighttime Mumbai; and Peter Cattaneo’s (The Full Monty, Military Wives) light-hearted adaptation of The Penguin Lessons, starring Steve Coogan as an English teacher in fraught 1970s Argentina.

 Award-winning films screening at the festival include Cannes Grand Prix winner and 2024 top film listed All We Imagine As Light ; BFI London Film Festival winners animated Memoir of a Snail, (Best Film Award), visually stunning Mother Vera (Best Documentary), On Falling (Sutherland Award for First Feature), Four Mothers (Audience Award).

 No fewer than six films in the programme – Flow,  How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies, I’m Still Here, Santosh, The Secret of the Sacred Fig and Vermiglio – are all shortlisted for International Feature Oscars. 

Vermiglio also won the Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize at Venice Film Festival in 2024. No Other Land and Soundtrack for a Coup d’Etat are on the Documentary Feature Academy Award shortlist.

 Approximately one third of the titles in the programme are directed and/or written by women and the festival continues to employ F-Rated badging to highlight their work.

A special feature for 2025 is the airing of two films, both from 1970, directed by women whose work has been underseen and undervalued: Wanda by Barbara Loden (US) and Murdering the Devil (Czechoslovakia) by Ester Krumbachová.

 Family audiences will relish the chance to watch the delightful Paddington in Peru at several Flicks in the Sticks venues along with the astounding, dialogue free animation Flow, definitely one for cat and animal lovers. 

New for 2025, is the Arts Alive initiative Mini Cini taking place at Leintwardine Community Centre. A Julia Donaldson short will be followed by related craft activities for under 7s with parents or carers.



 Borderlines offers several free screenings: Soundtrack for a Coup d’Etat at Malvern Theatres; the Best of Iris 2024 short films; a new locally made documentary about apples, Welcome to the Orchard of England at The Regal Tenbury Wells; and, of course, the regular Open Screen event.



For the second year running, Open Screen is awarding a prize for Best Film, kindly donated by Hereford based John Finch Computers. This popular event provides a valuable showcase for makers of short films who live or work in the area. Feedback from peers, audience members and the industry professionals who organise Open Screen is rounded off by a networking session hosted by BFI Network Midlands.



The festival brochure is available to download from the Borderlines website and printed copies have been posted to mailing list subscribers and distributed to outlets across the area covered by Borderlines.

 Tickets and passes for the Festival are on sale through borderlinesfilmfestival.org and in person or by phone through The Courtyard Hereford (01432 340555).