Curtain raises on first day of Screenplay film festival

A still from Gunda, showing at Screenplay.

The Screenplay film festival kicks off tonight (Wednesday) for the first time in just over two years.

The annual event had to be cancelled in 2020 but is returning this year – albeit in a truncated five-day format, and with most guests appearing virtually.

However, audiences can return to pack out Mareel’s two cinemas and its auditorium, with social distancing no longer in place.

The festival gets underway with a screening of the meditative black-and-white film Gunda, which focuses entirely on the lives of a group of farm animals and features no narration or voiceover, before a showing of Tim Barrow’s Riptide.

That is followed by a live Q+A between Screenplay curators Mark Kermode and Linda Ruth Williams, featuring only virtually this year, and director Barrow.

Guillermo del Toro is this year’s star attraction, and his 2001 gothic horror The Devil’s Backbone will screen on Friday evening.

Oscar-winning director del Toro will answer questions from the Mareel audience after the film.