Due to the Covid-19 pandemic we have had to make some changes to this year's festival programme.
This year's Wigan and Leigh Short Film Festival will now be a virtual event. We will still be putting on a celebration of North West film-making, an event for young directors and then our main event.
However, as it is not possible currently for Leigh Film to screen films, the festival will be online. The selected entries will be placed on the internet over three successive weekends for film fans to watch at their leisure.
The dates for this year's virtual festival are:
Young film-makers: Friday October 2 - Sunday October 4
North West film-makers: Friday October 9 - Sunday October 11
Main event (Wigan and Leigh Short Film Festival): Friday October 16 - Sunday October 18.
We had planned to hold a celebration of animation at The Fire Within in The Galleries Shopping Centre in Wigan in collaboration with artists Al and Al. Unfortunately this event has had to be postponed until next year. We will select a number of animations for our main event.
All festival events are run entirely by volunteers with all proceeds invested into a nominated charity and community arts.
Please note that the EarlyBird "free" submissions period in the Animation Category has now passed. The same submission charge as with the other categories is now being applied.
We celebrate and show-case low-budget filmmaking and up-and-coming talent from across the country and have screened everything from comedies and dramas to documentaries and animations while including work from across the world.
Working with colleges and universities, we offer work placements and real opportunities for young people to get festival experience.
We are proud to have four patrons, Jo Platt & award winning actors Christopher Eccleston, Ben Batt and Matthew McNulty.
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We have 4 submission categories which are;
Young Filmmakers aged 16 - 25
North West Filmmakers
Animation
General Entries