Welcome to our press page! Here you can find a selection of the coverage produced in occasion the 2020 Berwick Film and Media Arts festival. Read about the experience of writers and critics during the festival’s first online edition and take a peak on reviews about the artworks and filmmakers selected at the 16th festival.

Berwick’s programme is always politically orientated, but the most engaging projects in this year’s selection were those that connected contemporary and historical political struggles. Matt Turner, Art Monthly

Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival is the unsung hero of Britain’s festival circuit. (…) For all the damage coronavirus has wrought the world over, the festival’s decision to move online provided cinema seekers with the indelible opportunity to dig into their brilliant selection. Cinema Year Zero

Breaking with more mainstream-oriented attitudes towards cultural work an attendee-driven festival like BFMAF lives off the physical exchange between artists, curators, and audiences to remain vibrant and relevant. Marius Hrdy, The Brooklyn Rail

A festival where programming and curation play a fundamental role, beyond the selection process, and is defined by inventiveness, by research, by quality and by a commitment to discoveries free of prejudice in times of political correctness. Mónica Delgado, Desist Film

Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival has followed most film festivals this year in moving its edition online. Barring some geo-blocking (…), it’s a great opportunity for viewers who may not have been able to otherwise visit this intensely curated festival in person. Ela Bittencourt, Lyssaria

I spent some time with the Berwick Film Festival program. There was a lot (…); like scrolling through netflix, but it was all actually good and obscure and clever and beautiful. The White Pube

Colder mornings have made me want to curl up into my relative isolation rather than map any new terrain, and online cinematic offerings (shout out to BFMAF) are making me wonder about the world past my immediate sensory experience again. Reba Matin, Club Des Femmes

Held annually in the coastal town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, BFMAF pivoted to an all-online festival this year. This could have been a challenging transition, particularly as the programmers select directors whose work straddles both cinema screen and gallery space. I’ve listened to conversations on their website (…). That is as much a social space as the cinema is, and many of the fest’s selections feed into and play with your experiences in both arenas. It’s been illuminating to feel the home screen become a home gallery and home cinema, often simultaneously. Dan Montedona, Illicit Film Club

There is a sense of conjuring in Minott’s work, raising the voices of the past. With the impact of the pandemic, the current groundswell of activism and action against injustice, this year has called for a seismic shift, an upturning of common grounds that resonates within Minott’s work. Zara Joan Miller on Zinzi Minott’s ‘Fi Dem III’, Flash Art

If Marriage Story, with its pointed title, is positioned against anything, it’s the failure of the massive canon of heterosexual domesticity to produce compelling depictions of the satisfactions of intimacy. It may be that certain things will only ever be felt, not shown or spoken. Phil Coldiron on ‘Marriage Story’ by Jessica Dunn Rovinelli, New Cinema Competition

The short films of the British-Nigerian artist Ayo Akingbade are passionate testimonies of belonging. Impressionist and texturally rich, they excavate urban histories, as they also capture London neighbourhoods in flux. (…) Akingbade’s rhythmic sense and passionate approach to historical material have engendered a body of work, most of it shot on 16mm transferred to HD, whose social preoccupations and aesthetics resonate with the practices of artist filmmakers such as, in Britain, Isaac Julien, and in the US, Cauleen Smith. Ela Bittencourt on Filmmaker in Focus Ayo Akingbade, Sight & Sound Winter 2020–21 Issue