You don’t come to Raindance Film Festival 2026 to politely consume culture.
You come to feel the future before everyone else does.
For ten days in London, filmmakers, actors, writers, rebels, producers, obsessives, dreamers, outsiders, financiers, students, exhausted creators and accidental geniuses collide in cinemas, bars, corridors and late-night conversations that can genuinely change lives.
- A screening at 2pm becomes a collaboration by midnight.
- A random coffee queue becomes your next producing partner.
- A film nobody believed in detonates in front of a live audience.
That is the sizzle.
Not polished industry theatre.
- Discovery.
- Electricity.
- Momentum.
At most entertainment events, people attend to be seen.
At Raindance Film Festival, people come because they still believe cinema can matter.
You can feel it in the rooms.
First-time filmmakers sitting beside veterans. Audiences reacting to films no algorithm would ever recommend. Directors trembling before Q&As because this screening actually means something.
And then there’s London.
Rain on Leicester Square pavement. Neon reflections after midnight. Crowded cinemas. Conversations spilling into Soho bars. Deals, disasters, flirtations, arguments about cinema until 2am.
It feels alive.
- For younger filmmakers, it is a portal into a world they thought was closed.
- For established filmmakers, it is often a reminder of why they started before the industry turned everything into data and packaging.
- For audiences, it is one of the last places where you can still discover a film before marketing departments tell you how to feel about it.
And beneath all of it is something even bigger: hope.
Because every person walking into the festival secretly wonders the same thing:
What if this changes everything?
Sometimes it does.
Sometimes you just want to support Raindance through our registered charity partner, the Independent Film Trust – and donations get a 25% bump from Kier Starmer! Donate Here
Did You Know?
- Raindance Film Festival is considered one of the top fifteen film festivals in the world?
- Raindance has a Higher Education programme offering HND, BA and MA in Filmmaking and Screenwriting?
- All Raindance members support indie film, and enjoy a range of benefits
Photo Credit: Bertie Watson
I founded Raindance Film Festival in 1993 because the British film industry was closed, polite, and congratulating itself while shutting new filmmakers out.
I co-founded the British Independent Film Awards in 1998 because British indie film deserved more than a shrug, a pat on the head, and a Tuesday night screening.
Raindance didn’t start as a brand. It started as a rebellion: film training without gatekeepers, a festival without permission, and a community built by filmmakers who weren’t waiting to be invited in.
Later, we took it global: Toronto, Vancouver, New York, LA, Berlin, and Brussels, because independent film doesn’t belong to one city, one class, or one accent.
I’ve produced 700+ short films and seven features, including Deadly Virtues (2014) and ALICE, which won the SXSW Grand Jury Prize (2019) not because someone “discovered” us, but because the work earned its place.
I’ve written three books used by filmmakers worldwide because too many courses taught compliance instead of survival.
In 2009, I was awarded a PhD for services to film education, ironic, given that most of my career has been about tearing down the rules that education insisted you follow.
I don’t believe in waiting for permission.I believe in making work, building systems, and forcing the industry to catch up.
Specialties: Independent Film (the real kind) · Producing · Writing · Film Education · Festivals · Breaking Broken Systems
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