The London Film Festival, like many film festivals across the world, was forced to go virtual during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to showcase films at a time when in-person events were not viable. Usually, a range of movies are screened across London, from competing big-budget, highly anticipated films, to independent, experimental movies vying for a wider audience amongst the glamour of the red carpets and global premieres.

However, in 2020, the festival was forced by the pandemic to adapt, and it launched a hybrid movement, offering a few in-person events with many virtual screenings and digitally available events. Whilst some film festivals like Cannes cancelled their events that year, the London Film Festival, like Venice and Toronto, adopted this hybrid model in order to continue. Its online components came with an unprecedented advantage, though, and a newfound global audience of international critics was allowed to view these online screenings and participate in the virtual events. The reduced physical presence of the festivals led to an increased global presence of them, and film festivals have capitalised on this hybrid model making accessibility and inclusivity some of the main components of film festivals in the last couple years. The hybrid model has helped improve the audience experience, but also the experience for filmmakers, especially those that are smaller and independent with more niche audiences.

“film festivals have capitalised on this hybrid model making accessibility and inclusivity some of the main components”

For example, emerging filmmakers are provided the opportunity to have digital screenings, allowing their audience to be global and the film to be highlighted not beneath but alongside the big names and main galas of the festival. In the 2024 LFF, an entire ‘strand’ of movies (Experimenta) was selected to showcase experimental and avant-garde films which are all going to be available via virtual screenings to better reach their intended audiences and gain wider exposure to both the industry professionals and to public audiences. These movies might otherwise struggle for a wide cinema release, but by providing online access the niche works are exposed to a more diverse audience.

This means that crucial films like Kamal Aljafari’s film A Fidai Film, an archival movie that reconstructs and reclaims Palestine through unique editing effects, including burning the original images in striking colours, can be viewed across the globe. This provides a reach and accessibility that the Palestinian creator unfortunately wouldn’t have had access to otherwise. It is in this way that the film festival can now become a platform for emerging voices in underrepresented communities as well, with documentary, LGBTQ+, and cult strands showing untraditional films, as well as entire sections dedicated to first-time filmmakers.

“topics like climate change and deeply personal identity stories are no longer dead-ends for filmmakers who want to grow their audience”

With the Q&As, community engagement, and inspired social media discussions around some of these films, they garner much more recognition than if they were only shown in a handful of art-house cinemas. Topics like climate change and deeply personal identity stories are no longer dead-ends for filmmakers who want to grow their audience as well as tell a deeply affecting story. This hybrid model extends the festival beyond its 10-day window, allowing the films to grow in popularity via word of mouth and be screened weeks after the festival ends, gaining the filmmakers traction and new audiences.

The new hybrid model of film festivals looks like it is here to stay, maintaining the glamour of the live screenings as well as providing accessibility with wider distribution, exposure, and networks available to smaller filmmakers. This strengthens both the support a film festival can provide to them, as well as the support a film festival can receive globally.