RAI Film Festival returns to Bristol!

We are back in Bristol after four years as RAI Film Festival makes a welcome return with an exciting live programme of films, high-profile filmmaker events, workshops and exhibitions.

Live in Bristol takes place at the Watershed cinema and Arnolfini arts centre from 22 – 25 March, and is the perfect complement to RAI Film Festival 2023’s four-week online festival throughout March.

As well as accessing an online programme of over 80 films, full festival pass holders gain entry to all screenings, events and socials in Bristol! Festival passes are available to buy in advance here. Single tickets to live film screenings go on sale from 28 February.

RAI Film Festival showcases groundbreaking documentary filmmaking from around the world, gathering storytellers whose films shine a light on the people, places and stories that are too often lost in the spotlight of global media.

All ten main competition films will screen at the Watershed cinema during the festival. These are A Thousand Fires (Saeed Taji Farouky), Ernesto, gracias (Laura Ángel), How to Save a Dead Friend (Marusya Syroechkovskay), La Nave (Carlos Maria Romero), Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege (Abdallah Al-Khatib), Once Upon a Village (Srishti Lakhera), Rebel Objects (Carolina Arias Orti), Slow Return (Philip Cartell), Swirling in the Dreams (Hung En Su) and The Prison Promise (Joseph Dégramon Ndjom).

RAI Film Festival is honoured to welcome both this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award and President Award recipients, Alanis Obomsawin and Trinh T. Minh-ha, to Bristol to accept their awards.

Obomsawin, one of Canada’s most distinguished and prolific filmmakers, is in conversation with professor Faye Ginsburg (NYU), followed by screenings of Bill Reid Remembers with Honour to Senator Murray Sinclair and Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, considered a watershed film in First Nation filmmaking.

Trinh T. Minh-ha’s CPH:DOX New:Vision award-winning documentary What About China? is followed by the Vietnamese-born filmmaker in conversation with May Ingawanij.

Arandu – Listen to the Weather is a special programme of films and roundtable conversations celebrating 35 years of Indigenous filmmaking from Brazil. The programme highlights the cultural, land preservation and environmental issues raised by Indigenous film from the point of the view of the Indigenous communities.

For the first time, RAI Film Festival includes a section devoted to XR work, Expanded Reality Experience, featuring five multisensory and immersive works by emerging creators.

We also have an eclectic mix of workshops, including  The Tiktok of Social Life and Fundraising for documentary film through to Experiments in polyphonic documentary.

The festival provides plenty of opportunities for networking and socialising at both venues’ beautiful waterfront locations, including opening and closing night drinks receptions. What are you waiting for?

To explore the full programme of online films and Live in Bristol screenings and events, visit the festival website. Download a Live in Bristol PDF schedule of events here.