The Hebrides International Film Festival (HIBF) returns this month for its eighth edition with this year’s event concentrating on how to effect meaningful change in the world, and with a programme featuring films confronting environmental issues around the globe.
Screenings will take place across Harris, Lewis, North and South Uist, and Barra, and among the venues are Taigh Dhonnchaidh (or Duncan’s House) at Port of Ness on the tip of Lewis, and South Uist’s new Gaelic cultural hub, Cnoc Soilleir.
“We are thrilled that the Hebrides International Film Festival is returning to bring great film stories from across the world to our island audiences in the Hebrides,” said Muriel Ann Macleod of Stornoway-based production company Rural Nations CIC, who co-curates the festival with An Lanntair’s Kevin Smith and Andy Mackinnon of Uist Film. “This year’s festival shines a light on contemporary stories of change, both in how we are all negotiating dealing with environmental issues as systems change and cultures struggle to continue. Our programme reflects a diversity in island and First Nation experiences around the world and right here at home, including Maori, Canadian and Gaelic stories.
She added: “We are offering Hebridean cinema goers a festival packed with ideas, insight and ultimately positive solutions for climate action and social change.”
Among the festival highlights are Emma Davie’s The Oil Machine, which examines the uncertain future of the industry as activists and investors demand change, award-winning 2021 film Inhabitants, which follows five Native American Tribes as they seek to restore their traditional land management practices, and Abbe Hassan’s Exodus, in which a people smuggler reluctantly teams up with a 12-year-old Syrian girl whose family have gone missing in the civil war.
Elsewhere in the documentary strand is The Hermit Of Treig, Lizzie MacKenzie’s 2022 film about Ken Smith, who has spent 40 years living off grid near Loch Treig; The Nettle Dress, Dylan Howit’s film about a dress made by textile artist Allan Brown from foraged stinging nettles; Savage Waters, a surfing film about a search for a mythical wave; and Last Of The Right Whales, which follows the migration of a group of extinction-threatened North Atlantic Right whales.
Picks of the drama strand include Charlotte Wells’s debut feature Aftersun and The Banshees of Inisherin, both of which were Oscar-nominated, as well as New Zealand-set drama Muru, and Irish coming-of-age film The Quiet Girl, which has dialogue largely in Irish Gaelic.
Among the other highlights will be a screening from Mr Mackinnon’s projects, Cinema Sgìre, which aims to digitise a wealth footage produced by communities across the Outer Hebrides in the 1970s, and Dùthchas/Home, which features previously unseen film of everyday life on the Isle of Berneray in the 1960s and 1970. It will be presented with a new soundtrack composed by Donald Shaw, creative director of Celtic Connections and mainstay of Scottish folk supergroup Capercaillie.
Aside from the film screenings other activities planned include a beach clean and a whale watching excursion.
The festival opens on May 15 and runs until May 20.
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