From Threads to The Full Monty: Sheffield film festival gives city a starring role

And so this August, running from day (August 2) to the 31st, is the inaugural Sheffield Film Festival which is intended to be “a celebration of the rich film heritage and thriving film culture of Sheffield, and the surrounding region.”

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It’s a broad and eclectic festival spanning films for children and young adults to a Warp films retrospective as well as numerous one-off screenings shown in collaboration with local organisations including Sheffield DocFest, Celluloid Screams, Film Hub North, Sheffield Adventure Film Festival, Cinema Palestino, Film Girls Galore, Sheffield Museums, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield Hallam University, T A P E Collective, Anagram and QTIBPOC Cinema Club.

“I really wanted to focus on partnerships,” says Finnigan. “Sheffield film as a community is underappreciated but it’s thriving. I've been here 21 years now and it never ceases to amaze me how much happens and a lot of it is on a DIY and community level – and maybe that doesn't always get the platform it deserves, so we wanted to try and change that.”

The opening night film is a 40th anniversary screening of the nuclear holocaust film, Threads, which was both set and shot in the city. Despite its harrowing subject matter, it has garnered a huge appetite with local audiences. The screening is a repeat because the last one sold out with such rapid demand that it proved to be the biggest advance ticket sales for a film that the cinema had seen since Barbie opened last summer. “The response to Threads has been beyond what we could have expected,” says Finnigan. “Sheffield is a proud city and is interested in its own heritage and it's something that we should be encouraging, and that we are a place where people can come and learn about the history of the city or their own cultural heritage. I think that's very important and I'm really pleased to see the response to that.”

Celebrating local talent via the contributions of Sheffield-based filmmakers, producers, programmers, academics and cinephiles is something Finigan feels is sincerely important. “It’s part of our responsibility to do things that reflect Sheffield,” he says. “We're one of, if not the only, commercial cinema that has a local programming team. Chain cinemas are centrally programmed and so that leaves a certain amount of responsibility on us to make sure that Sheffield is reflected on screen. That's something we take very seriously.”

Elsewhere the retrospective series on the Sheffield-based production company, Warp, will be screening some of their films such as Dead Man’s Shoes, Four Lions, This is England, Submarine and numerous others. “Warp’s contribution to film is incredible,” says Finnigan. “And not just to Sheffield, or the UK, but globally. I think that needed pulling together in a way of reminding people.” Other gems in the programme include the documentary on one of Sheffield’s most beloved bands, Pulp: A Film About Life, Death, and Supermarkets, a horror marathon with Sheffield festival Celluloid Screams which is screening four films back-to-back all on 35mm print.

Plus, there’s a 30th anniversary screening of Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers. This screening has a two-pronged Sheffield link: firstly, the creator Nick Park studied at what is now Sheffield Hallam University and secondly, the local Unite Brass Band will be performing a live score to the animation. “There's 23 of them in the band, so it's going to be a big production,” says Finnigan.

The closing night film will be a rare screening of Ken Loach’s Sheffield-set Looks and Smiles, which was written by Barry Hines, the late South Yorkshire writer who was also the scriptwriter for Threads and whose book A Kestrel for a Knave was turned into Kes by Loach too. “Barry Hines has sort of become the thread, pun intended, of the festival,” says Finnigan. “The launch event back in May was with Dave Forrest [Professor in Film & Television Studies at University of Sheffield] about his new book on Kes. So you had the launch event and the opening event both connected by Barry so it seemed natural to look for a closing event related to him too. We were hoping to have Ken Loach join us but he's not very well, unfortunately.”

But with a new VR exhibition on as part of the festival, as well partnerships with brand new award-winning LGBTQ+ community film clubs, the aim is not to just reflect the history of Sheffield. “If you're doing something like a Sheffield Film Festival, it'd be very, very easy to just put on Threads along with The Full Monty and go through the list of the big things,” Finnigan says. “Heritage and anything that reflects a place shouldn't just be backward looking. I wanted to include a lot of new things and things looking towards the future, and to have an appreciation of the different needs of the city as well.”

Despite it only being year one, there’s already hopes and ambitions for this to become a longstanding festival that can grow and expand and put Sheffield even more on the film map of the UK – or even world. “I would like to see the Sheffield Film Festival continue,” Finnigan says. “And who knows, maybe it could go beyond that and we could be looking to have a Sheffield International Film Festival that other big cities do. Something that says: we are Sheffield, we're here, and we're very good at cinema.”