The Raindance Film Festival in London has unveiled the lineup for its 33rd edition, its biggest post-COVID pandemic edition. It will feature 70 fiction features and documentaries, which organizers said marks a 90 percent increase over the 2024 fest.
The festival will open on June 18 with the world premiere of Christopher M. Anthony’s boxing drama Heavyweight, starring Nicholas Pinnock, Jason Isaacs and Jordon Bolger. “Other highlights,” as called out by the organizers, include Kenya’s Oscar submission child marriage drama Nawi: Dear Future Me, which THR just featured as an “unsold gem” in Cannes, Burham Qurbani’s crime thriller No Beast. So Fierce., loosely based on William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Richard the Third, Elena Manrique’s black comedy The Party’s Over, and closing night film The Academy, directed by Camilla Guttner, about an art student who “discovers the microcosm of an art academy.”
Raindance has also teamed up with Netflix to premiere the six documentary shorts of the third Netflix Documentary Talent Fund.
“Raindance is always one to punch above its weight, so it’s appropriate that the festival’s 33rd edition
should open with the world premiere of a British debut feature about a wildcard boxer,” said
Raindance founder Elliot Grove. “Throughout this edition, Raindance continues to champion new voices and under-the-radar films that many other festivals overlook.”
Here is a look at this year’s Raindance jury: actress Antonia Campbell-Hughes (It Is In Us All), actress Ashley Walters (Adolescence, Top Boy), Ted Lasso‘s “Dani Rojas” Cristo Fernández, actress Emily Beecham (Pursuit of Love, Cruella), actor Iain Glen (Game of Thrones, Resident Evil), actor Iwan Rheon (Vicious, Game of Thrones), actor Jason Flemyng (Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, The
Curious Case of Benjamin Button), actor Jo Hartley (Swede Caroline), actress Natascha McElhone (Laurel Canyon, Carmen), director Ng Choon Ping (Femme, What It Feels Like for a Girl), actor Theo Barklem-Biggs (Rogue Heroes, Cherry), actor Tosin Cole (Supacell), director Waad Al-Kateab (For Sama, We Dare To Dream), Fred Hogge, the co-founder of BIFA, director Joshua Trigg (Satu – Year of the Rabbit), producer Kemal Akhtar, film critic Neil Norman, director Sam Crane (Grand Theft Hamlet), production designer Sonja Klaus (Gladiator, American Gangster), and Vineeta Misra, head of the NFDC Film Bazaar India.
Check out the full international feature competition for the Raindance festival, which runs June 18-27, including organizers’ comments, below.
DREAM! (dir: Paul Spurrier, Thailand) World Premiere. One of the biggest independent films ever
made in Thailand, this lavish and cinematic Christmas-set musical follows a young girl who flees her
mountain home, beginning a magical journey across Thailand to find a new family.
GRANNY MUST DIE (dir: Yi Jung Chen, Taiwan) International Premiere. Debut feature. This dark
absurdist comedy portrays three generations of a family living in a tiny Taipei apartment when love,
duty and lunacy spiral delightfully out of control.
LOVE SONG FROM HIROSHIMA (dir: Hideyuki Tokigawa, Japan) European Premiere. A call to peace
and togetherness as a benevolent alien wanders around present-day Hiroshima.
NAWI: DEAR FUTURE ME (dir: Vallentine Chelluget, Apuu Mourine, Kevin Schmutzler, Toby Schmutzler, Kenya) UK Premiere. Debut feature. Highlighting the plight of child brides in Africa, and acclaimed at multiple film festivals and at the African Movie Academy Awards, it follows a 13-year-old whose father is
selling her to a much older man for a herd of goats, and so she embarks on a journey to reclaim her
dream of joining high school.
NO BEAST. SO FIERCE. (dir: Burhan Qurbani, Poland/France/Germany) UK Premiere. Following its
World Premiere at Berlin, this adaptation of Richard III by award-winning director Burhan Qurbani sees
actress Kenda Hmeidan dazzle as the daughter of an Arab clan who, in the aftermath of a bloody
gang war, plots against her male siblings to become the undisputed boss of the Berlin underworld.
PATERNAL LEAVE (dir: Alissa Jung, Germany/Italy) UK Premiere. Debut feature. A champion at
Berlin and BCN film festivals, it follows a teenage girl’s journey to Italy’s northern coast, seeking her
unknown biological father.
SHAKESPEARE’S THE TEMPEST (dir: Garret Replogle, USA) European Premiere. Debut feature. Star
Trek meets Shakespeare in this tale of a spaceship captain marooned on a desert planet who
orchestrates a series of events to confront the crew who betrayed him.
SRISHTI (dir: Paul Antar, India) World Premiere. Debut feature. The story of a photographer, haunted
by childhood guilt, who travels to remote Himalayan Sector K to investigate a mysterious
phenomenon – this mystery/drama highlights the plight of children forced to work trawling through
giant rubbish heaps in search of things that can be monetized.
TAPE (dir: Bizhan Tong, UK/Hong Hong) UK Premiere. Set in modern-day Asia, this bold reimagining
of Richard Linklater’s cult classic sees three high school friends reunite, only to confront a harrowing
secret from their past.
THE PARTY’S OVER (dir: Elena Manrique, Spain/Belgium) UK Premiere. Debut feature. Beatriz Arjona
won “Best Lead Actress” Carmen Award for her role as a wealthy divorcée in southern Spain whose
life is disrupted when a young Senegalese immigrant seeks shelter in her toolshed.
WET MONDAY (dir: Justyna Mytnik, Poland). UK Premiere. Debut feature. When repressed trauma
from a sexual assault resurfaces, a teenage girl develops a strange fear of water. Thanks to a newfound friend, she confronts it in an unusual way.
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