Thank you for joining us for LIFF 2024

The 38th Leeds International Film Festival (LIFF) took place from 1–17 November 2024, with over 300 film screenings and events across 13 venues in Leeds and around West Yorkshire.

LIFF 2024 featured 259 films - 110 features and 149 shorts - from 71 countries, with 29 World, International and European Premieres, 69 UK Premieres, and 59 English and Yorkshire Premieres. The LIFF programmers, including 18 new short film selectors, considered over 5,000 submissions from 122 countries.

There were over 23,000 admissions at LIFF 2024 and over 1000 ticket-sharing passes were sold, with big increases in audience members seeing 10 or more films and those aged 25 and under. We received nearly 15,000 audience votes for feature films screening at LIFF 2024, with ratings from 1 (low) to 5 (high), and the average overall score was 4.02 out of 5. You can view lists of the top rated films at LIFF 2024 on this link and the winners are as follows (plus two from our short film competitions that also included audience votes):

LIFF 2024 Audience Awards

• Best Fiction Feature: Memoir of a Snail, directed by Adam Elliot.
• Best Documentary Feature: No Other Land., directed by Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor.
• Best Retrospective Feature: Singin’ in the Rain, directed by Gene Kelly.
• Best Short - Fanomenon Short Film Competition: Fishmonger, directed by Neil Ferron.
• Best Short - Leeds Screendance Competition: YES!, directed by Madli Lääne.

We welcomed 10 juries for LIFF 2024, with 30 filmmakers, programmers, writers, academics, and more, and they judged 2 competitions for features and 8 for shorts. The winners are as follows:

LIFF 2024 Jury Awards (Features)

• Contellation Feature Film Competition: The Fable, directed by Raam Reddy.
• Fanomenon Feature Film Competition: She Loved Blossoms More, directed by Yannis Vesleme.

LIFF 2024 Jury Awards (Shorts)

• Louis Le Prince International Short Film Competition: An Orange From Jaffa, directed by Mohammed Almughanni.
• World Animation Competition: Shadows, directed by Rand Beiruty.
• Documentary Short Film Competition: At That Very Moment, directed by Federico Luis Tachella and Rita Pauls.
• British Short Film Competition: Sleepyhead, directed by Milly Garnier.
• Yorkshire Short Film Competition: Paula Says Hi, directed by James C Thompson.
• Fanomenon Short Film Competition: Marriage Unplugged, directed by Florine & Kim Nüesch.
• Leeds Queer Short Film Competition: ¡Beso de lengua!, directed by José Luis Zorrero.
• Leeds Music Video Competition: The Rider by Matthew Herbert & London Contemporary Orchestra, directed by Sebastian Lelio.
• Leeds Screendance Competition: This Madness of Loving, directed by Rola Shamas.

We also welcomed many guests for films across the LIFF 2024 programme, including directors Jethro Massey (Paul and Paulette Take a Bath), Ivana Gloria (Chlorophyll), Eugene Kotlyarenko (The Code), Roman Bondachuk (The Editorial Office), Raam Reddy (The Fable) and Elizabeth Sankey (Witches). Guests for special events included director Friedrich Moser, historian Peter Cochrane, and Professor Julie Firmstone for the How to Build a Truth Engine panel event, and Ukrainian musicans Roksana Smirnova-Kalinina and Misha Kalinin for a live performance with Dovzhenko's Earth. We also welcomed six members of the cast and crew for the world premiere of Monkey's Magic Merry Go Round, including director Aidan Leary, producer Joe Swanberg and puppet designer Jackie Smook. There were 140 introductions for screenings, including film experts like Dr Omar Ahmed, programme advisor for the Smita Patil retrospective.

We presented over 50 screenings with additional accessibility at LIFF 2024, including with descriptive subtitles and audio description, and that were autism friendly. We launched a new collaboration with Purple Patch Arts in Leeds, providing 130 learning-disabled people with a unique, multi-sensory experience of the short film House Phone, helping audiences overcome barriers to connect with the power of film. We also extended our reach to community venues across West Yorkshire, creating opportunities for local audiences to experience independent cinema in inclusive and accessible spaces where they live, including St Lukes Cares in Beeston, The Old Fire Station in Gipton, Chapel FM in Seacroft, and Stockroom Cinema in Keighley.

We continued to expand our marketing for LIFF 2024, launching a new website, updating design, and increasing our reach and partnerships. We launched a Letterboxd account, providing audience members with another way to engage with LIFF and creating a whole new collection of reactions to the programme. We partnered with Take It Easy Lab in Leeds to create a look behind-the-scenes with their point-and-click film cameras during LIFF, now available on their blog. We also launched a new collaboration with Teemill, with a sustainable, print-on-demand Leeds Film store, ensuring LIFF merchandise is accessible and eco-friendly year-round: you can now buy LIFF mugs, t-shirts, sweatshirts, and tote bags on this link.

We are immensely grateful to all the partners, organizations and individuals who make LIFF possible. The support of Leeds City Council, Leeds Arts, Events and Venues, the British Film Institute and National Lottery, and our leading and supporting partners is incredibly important to the success and growth of LIFF every year. The LIFF team have done amazing work on this year's edition, including all our new freelance film programmers, and the 174 volunteers greatly enhanced the LIFF experience, receiving brilliant feedback from our audience. A special thank you to our Digital Content Producer Sally Molinueux and our Video and Edit volunteers for producing the LIFF 2024 highlights video which you can view at the top of this article.

 

A huge thank you to our audience for being part of LIFF 2024. We can’t wait to welcome you back at some of our year round-events including the LIFF Spring Film Weekender in April and Cinema on the Square in July. LIFF returns for its 39th edition from 6-23 November 2025 and we are already working on bringing to Leeds an even more exciting selection of film discoveries from the UK and around the world.

Photos used in the article taken by Tatiana Hepplewhite and Romy Gregory.