Berwick's annual showcase of screen-based art turns 21
Countdown to film & media arts fest
Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival returns this month for its 21st edition with three days of screenings (March 20 to 22) at two venues – the Maltings Cinema at Berwick Barracks and the Town Hall Council Chamber.
Regulars will know that in the past it’s been all over the place. And they will also know that this distinctive Berwick celebration of the moving image is the absolute antidote to Hollywood.
With its focus generally far from the mainstream, director Peter Taylor has in the past called it “a perpetual work in progress, rejecting labels that might restrict how we see, understand and experience cinema”.
Following what organisers call last year’s “bumper” 20th anniversary edition, this year’s comes with the promise of no clashing events – which is to say that it’s smaller.
But look on the bright side. The organisers suggest those attending can “collectively encounter films, conversations and performances, and savour the time between events to walk the town walls, eat together and reflect on the work”.
Peter says it gives the festival “all of the time and space it needs”.
As for the overarching theme, this 2026 edition “traces the contemporary and historical pulse of migrant workers and diaspora, treating disability and neurodivergence as vital perspectives rather than problems to solve”.
This year’s ‘Filmmakers in Focus’ are Naeem Mohaiemen, a 2018 Turner Prize nominee who was born in London but grew up in Libya and Bangladesh, and Molla Sagar, from Bangladesh, an artist known for exploring rural life and social justice.
Mohaiemen was invited by the festival to curate a selection of Sagar’s films and chose those he considered to be in dialogue with his own. Working together, they programmed three distinct bodies of their work.
The festival’s New Cinema strand, boasting two international premieres, features new work from Ireland, the United States and the UK.
In The Glass Booth (2025), filmmaker Jenny Brady focuses on interpreters, recalling a 1985 Geneva summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev and Dublin schoolchildren participating in a ‘young interpreters’ scheme.
It will be shown alongside a scratch performance of COMMS FAIL by Roy Claire Potter, artist, writer, performer and senior lecturer in fine art at Liverpool John Moores University.
The work will be given its premiere later this spring at Liverpool Biennale.
There will be premieres in Berwick of two new films looking at Irish identity, migration and systematic control.
The screening of Carceral Jigs, by Eoghan Ryan, and No Irish Need Apply, by Marianne Keating, will be followed by a Q&A session moderated by art historian Isobel Harbison.
The Essential Cinema strand will see a screening of Black Nations/Queer Nations? by Shari Frilot, a “pivotal” 1995 experimental documentary looking at the challenges faced by individuals who are both queer and part of the African diaspora.
There will also be a ‘work-in-progress’ premiere of Be Yersel! (The Legend o’ Jesse Rae) by Marco J Federici.
It tells the story of Rae, a farm boy from St Boswells in the Scottish borders who became a funk and music video pioneer after moving to the United States in the 1970s and working as a runner at the New York Stock Exchange.
The Berwick showing will be followed by a conversation with the director and the now 75-year-old Jesse Rae.
Meanwhile, The Queer Care Caravan, an artist residency hosted by The Burr of Berwick – the new social space at 57 Marygate – has been exploring LGBTQIA+ community-led care.
The project ends on March 22 which the festival will mark with a workshop and screenings.
To explore the full 2026 programme, go to the Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival website.