Cine-Excess is an international film festival and conference devoted to the critical study of global cult film traditions, and has been running annually since 2007. Cine-Excess hosts UK theatrical premieres and exclusive screenings, visiting international filmmakers, a themed conference and media mentoring sessions for young filmmakers.

Cine-Excess has a strong tradition of attracting global cult filmmakers as guests to the event, who attend as recipients of the annual Cine-Excess Lifetime Achievement Award. Some of the previous filmmaking guests of honour to have attended Cine-Excess include Pam Grier, Ti West, Brandon Cronenberg, Jen and Sylvia Soska, Catherine Breillat, Peter Strickland, Roger Corman, Dario Argento, Joe Dante, Vanessa Redgrave, Sergio Martino, Franco Nero, John Landis, Enzo G. Castellari, Brian Yuzna, Ruggero Deodato, Victoria Price, Stuart Gordon, Jeff Lieberman, Pete Walker, Norman J. Warren and Jake West.

In 2021 a new Cine-Excess Digital Film Channel will be launched to promote a selection of key films screened at the annual festival. The Cine-Excess Digital Film Channel will stream across both Amazon UK and Uscreen platforms, with the latter outlet providing a 'Director's Vision' imprint that compliments feature film releases with a range of ancillary extras created in collaboration with the filmmakers.

In terms of its programming strategy, Cine-Excess hosts a range of UK theatrical premieres and exclusive retrospective screenings from around the world, but with a strong focus on the following global territories: Europe, North America/Canada, Central America, Asia and Australia. The festival also retains a wide definition of cult film that encompasses a broad range of horror cycles, unconventional thrillers, revisionist or hybrid genres (such as science fiction, gangster cinema, dark love dramas or the western), action cycles or fantastic titles that can also be linked to wider national film traditions.

Cine-Excess remains committed to issues of diversity and inclusion, and this ethos informs both the annual festival and filmmakers promoted across the new Cine-Excess Digital Film Channel.

Awards & Prizes

As well as hosting a Distinctive Visions event dedicated to emerging cult and horror directors (March 2023), our main annual festival will run between 17th-22nd October 2023. This will feature both physical and online events that include a film festival season of UK premieres, visiting international filmmaker awards and retrospectives and a themed academic conference.

As part of Cine-Excess 2023 we are seeking feature film and documentary submissions that can be judged and awarded in the following 2 categories:

1. Cine-Excess Emerging Voices: Feature films from distinctive first time or emergent directors, whose work provides an important new vision for cult cinema.

2. Cine-Excess Streamed: New cult visions seeking distribution through the Cine-Excess Digital Film Channel that launched in March 2021.

The deadlines for submission are Friday 4th February 2022 (Cine-Excess Distinctive Visions March 2022 event only), Friday 29th April 2022 (early bird festival submission deadline), Friday 22nd July 2021(regular festival submission deadline) and Friday 16th September (late festival submission/final deadline). An additional deadline of Friday 7th October is for those entrants who only wish to have their film considered for distribution on the Cine-Excess Digital Streaming Channel.

Festival entrants must ensure that their films are either UK premieres, or are not been widely distributed (either theatrically or on UK home entertainment platforms) before submitting work for competition at Cine-Excess.

Streamed entrants must ensure that their films are currently not being distributed on UK home entertainment platforms (digital/terrestrial/satellite) before submitting work for consideration on the Cine-Excess Digital Film Channel.

Rules & Terms

Submission Eligibility
- All films submitted must have been completed within a period of three calendar years previous to the start of the festival.
- The student concession fee is only applicable to filmmakers that were full time students at the time of making the film.
- All films in a language other than English must be subtitled in English.

Terms and conditions:
Cine-Excess is hereby granted the right to utilize an excerpt from any film submitted and accepted for exhibition at the Festival for promotional purposes. The individual or corporation submitting the film hereby warrants that it is authorized to commit the film for screening, and understands and accepts these requirements and regulations. The undersigned shall indemnify and hold harmless Cine-Excess from and against any and all claims, liabilities, losses, damages, and expenses (including but not limited to attorney's fees, and costs of the court) which may be incurred by reason of any claim involving copyright, trademark, credits, publicity, screening, and loss of or damage to the screening videos entered. The admission fees are non-refundable.

* Cine-Excess has and will continue to monitor the Covid 19 (coronavirus) outbreak, regularly reviewing the situation and taking necessary action. Our priority is to ensure the health and safety of our attendees, delegates, staff, and everyone we work with. Cine-Excess reserves the right to amend the conference and festival programme in the event of changes to Covid 19 restrictions and guidelines.
7 Reviews
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  • Antonio Rotunno

    Thank you for having us and premiering our feature film "Please Don't Abandon Me" at the special event Distinctive Visions, as well as the dedication on each work presented.

    November 2022
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  • Stephen King Simmons

    CINE-EXCESS not only cares about the filmmakers work. They go out of their way to get as much attention for each film. Highly communicative, friendly and the networking is top notch. My feature "THE PARKER SESSIONS" played at CINE-EXCESS and I have to say it was one of my favorite experiences in the film festival circuit. I will be submitting my future work in this festival. The organizers go above and beyond compared to other film festivals out there.

    November 2022
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  • Lauren Shaw

    Great festival. Everything was clearly communicated and run efficiently. I would definitely recommend entering. :)

    November 2022
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  • Luca Machnich

    Excellent organization and very friendly and warm team  

    January 2021
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  • Katrina Grey

    Thank you very much to festivals organizers. The communication was amazing! Highly recommending this festival, as they are very professional and also extremely well organized. Very honoured to be part of your official selection and also thank you for your recognition and acknoledging our hard work we put into our movie.

    November 2020
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