The Spirit of Independence film festival is a unique celebration of raw, passionate filmmakers who make films on a micro-budget. Our remit is that we only screen feature films made for under £150k (short films made for under £1k) providing a platform for fresh talent who work with small budgets to screen and celebrate their films.

Doesn't micro-budget mean it will look amateurish? Well no - if you look at some of the biggest talent working in Hollywood today they all started working with films made for less than £100k - Christopher Nolan's Following, Kevin Smith's Clerks and Darren Aronofsky's Pi to name a few.

Our goal is simple - to provide a platform for these films to get out there and to inspire filmmakers of the future to see what can be accomplished with little money.

Held at the beautiful Grade II listed art-deco theatre, the Abbeydale Picturehouse and funded locally we are working tirelessly to give you film the exposure it so rightly deserves.

Awards & Prizes

It Cost How Much?? Best achievement for a feature film award

That looks awesome! Best achievement for a short film award

We'll be announcing the prizes soon - we are looking to work with local students to provide a uniquely designed trophy.

Rules & Terms

1. All feature films must have a budget of £150,000 or less - for films made in other currencies a reasonable exchange rate must be applied to demonstrate it is equivalent to £150K GBP e.g. $195K USD or € 175K EUR

2. All short films must have a budget if £1,000 or less - for films made in other currencies a reasonable exchange rate must be applied to demonstrate it is equivalent to £1000 GBP e.g. $1300 USD or €1200 EUR

3. Feature films for our purposes are determined by a running time of 60 minutes or more

4. Short films for our purposes are determined by a running time of under 10 minutes

5. All films must be made available by a digital download, DCP files are not required

6. All work must solely be that of the submitter or related party

7. All films not in the English language must have English subtitles provided
3 Reviews
Overall Rating
Quality
Value
Communication
Hospitality
Networking
  • Michael Fausti

    Outstanding festival. Hosts Ben and Mat made us most welcome. An interesting and varied day’s programming. Plus we got to see our film, The Ingress Tapes in an outstanding historic cinema - brilliant venue. Will definitely be submitting future projects. Recommended!

    January 2020
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  • Joshua Overbay

    The programmers did their best to truly celebrate micro-budget filmmaking. The selected films were strong and distinctive. The venue had a ton of class, history, and innate aesthetic quality. The panels were beneficial and the panelists were transparent. And the hospitality from Ben was exceptional. We felt incredibly welcomed and valued.

    September 2019
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  • Stefen Harris

    The crew and cast of Blue Moon are thrilled to have been included in Spirit of Independence this year. An excellent event all round. Ben was very communicative and kept us up to date with progress. See you next year.
    Stef Harris -Director.

    September 2019
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