Today Elliot Grove & Suzanne Ballantyne received their British Citizen Award Medal of Honour for Services to the Arts, their daughter Désirée Ballantyne-Grove collected on behalf of Suzanne Ballantyne. For more than thirty years, Elliot and Suzanne have helped thousands of independent filmmakers find their voice. This award is recognition that independent filmmaking matters. Elliot […]
Today the 34th edition of the Raindance Film Festival begins. Explore the programme here And every year when the lights go down and the first frame hits the screen, I’m reminded why festivals like this still matter. Because independent cinema was never meant to be safe. It was never designed to fit neatly into algorithms, […]
The connection between human and machine lies at the heart of riding a motorcycle. The machine brings you places, physically, and emotionally that you alone could never reach alone. The same is true for independent filmmakers. The machines (cameras, recorders, computers) allow us to capture a vision, shape a story, and, if we’re lucky, move […]
If there is one documentary at the 34th Raindance Film Festival that feels less like entertainment and more like an alarm bell, it is Ghost in the Machine. Following its world premiere in the NEXT section at Sundance Film Festival, Valerie Veatch’s documentary arrives at Raindance carrying exactly the kind of conversation independent cinema was […]
Horror is no longer a side genre whispered about by outsiders. Horror is independent cinema. It is where filmmakers take risks, break rules, invent styles, and say the things polite cinema is often too frightened to say. And appointing Catherine Corcoran as the new horror ambassador for Raindance sends a very clear message: this festival […]
Seven is a useful number for horror. Seven days trapped somewhere you should never have gone. Seven bad decisions. Seven bodies. Seven secrets nobody talks about until it is too late. And perhaps that is why Australian horror often feels so primal. It strips cinema back to instinct. Survival. Fear. Isolation. Emotional collapse. Films like […]
Independent horror is having another moment. Not the polished studio kind built by committee and market research. Not horror diluted into “elevated content” for streaming algorithms. We mean the real thing: strange visions, dangerous ideas, midnight audiences, filmmakers breaking rules because they have no choice. And that is exactly why horror belongs at Raindance. For […]
Film festivals are supposed to be about cinema. They are not. There are so many types of people you meet at Raindance They are about caffeine, social anxiety, tote bags, existential collapse, and people pretending they “absolutely loved the pacing.” After thirty-plus years of standing in festival foyers, here are the seven species guaranteed to […]
Forget the fantasy. This is not Cannes with yachts and sunglasses pretending to be cinema. Your first time at Raindance 2026 is going to be a lot different. This is where filmmakers, screenwriters, actors, producers, obsessives, and future collaborators collide in dark cinemas, noisy bars, packed Q&As, and late-night conversations that can genuinely change your […]
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. […]
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