{"id":113879,"date":"2025-05-19T08:32:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-19T08:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/113879\/"},"modified":"2025-05-19T08:32:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-19T08:32:08","slug":"raindance-film-festival-london-2025-lineup-unveiled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/113879\/","title":{"rendered":"Raindance\u00a0Film Festival London 2025 Lineup Unveiled"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe\u00a0Raindance<\/a>\u00a0Film Festival in London has unveiled the lineup for its 33rd edition, its biggest post-COVID pandemic edition. It will feature 70 fiction features and documentaries, which organizers said marks a 90 percent increase over the 2024 fest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The festival will open on June 18 with the world premiere of Christopher M. Anthony\u2019s boxing drama Heavyweight, starring Nicholas Pinnock, Jason Isaacs and Jordon Bolger. \u201cOther highlights,\u201d as called out by the organizers, include Kenya\u2019s Oscar submission child marriage drama Nawi: Dear Future Me<\/a>, which THR just featured as an \u201cunsold gem\u201d<\/a> in Cannes, Burham Qurbani\u2019s crime thriller No Beast. So Fierce., loosely based on\u00a0William Shakespeare\u2019s\u00a0The Tragedy of Richard the Third,\u00a0Elena Manrique\u2019s black comedy The Party\u2019s Over, and closing night film The Academy, directed by Camilla Guttner, about an art student who \u201cdiscovers the microcosm of an art academy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Raindance\u00a0has also teamed up with Netflix to premiere the six documentary shorts of the third Netflix Documentary Talent Fund<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cRaindance is always one to punch above its weight, so it\u2019s appropriate that the festival\u2019s 33rd edition
should open with the world premiere of a British debut feature about a wildcard boxer,\u201d said
Raindance founder Elliot Grove. \u201cThroughout this edition, Raindance continues to champion new voices and under-the-radar films that many other festivals overlook.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHere is a look at this year\u2019s Raindance jury: actress Antonia Campbell-Hughes (It Is In Us All), actress Ashley Walters (Adolescence<\/a>, Top Boy), Ted Lasso\u2018s \u201cDani Rojas\u201d Cristo Fern\u00e1ndez, actress Emily Beecham (Pursuit of Love, Cruella), actor Iain Glen (Game of Thrones, Resident Evil), actor Iwan Rheon (Vicious, Game of Thrones), actor Jason Flemyng (Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, The
Curious Case of Benjamin Button), actor Jo Hartley (Swede Caroline), actress Natascha McElhone (Laurel Canyon, Carmen), director Ng Choon Ping (Femme, What It Feels Like for a Girl), actor Theo Barklem-Biggs (Rogue Heroes, Cherry), actor Tosin Cole (Supacell), director Waad Al-Kateab (For Sama, We Dare To Dream), Fred Hogge, the co-founder of BIFA, director Joshua Trigg (Satu \u2013 Year of the Rabbit), producer Kemal Akhtar, film critic Neil Norman, director Sam Crane (Grand Theft Hamlet), production designer Sonja Klaus (Gladiator, American Gangster), and Vineeta Misra, head of the NFDC Film Bazaar India.<\/p>\n

\n\tCheck out the full international<\/a> feature competition for the Raindance festival, which runs June 18-27, including organizers\u2019 comments, below.<\/p>\n

\n\tDREAM! (dir: Paul Spurrier, Thailand) World Premiere. One of the biggest independent films ever
made in Thailand, this lavish and cinematic Christmas-set musical follows a young girl who flees her
mountain home, beginning a magical journey across Thailand to find a new family.<\/p>\n

GRANNY MUST DIE (dir: Yi Jung Chen, Taiwan) International Premiere. Debut feature. This dark
absurdist comedy portrays three generations of a family living in a tiny Taipei apartment when love,
duty and lunacy spiral delightfully out of control.<\/p>\n

LOVE SONG FROM HIROSHIMA (dir: Hideyuki Tokigawa, Japan) European Premiere. A call to peace
and togetherness as a benevolent alien wanders around present-day Hiroshima.<\/p>\n

NAWI: DEAR FUTURE ME (dir: Vallentine Chelluget, Apuu Mourine, Kevin Schmutzler, Toby Schmutzler, Kenya) UK Premiere. Debut feature. Highlighting the plight of child brides in Africa, and acclaimed at multiple film festivals and at the African Movie Academy Awards, it follows a 13-year-old whose father is
selling her to a much older man for a herd of goats, and so she embarks on a journey to reclaim her
dream of joining high school.<\/p>\n

NO BEAST. SO FIERCE. (dir: Burhan Qurbani, Poland\/France\/Germany) UK Premiere. Following its
World Premiere at Berlin, this adaptation of Richard III by award-winning director Burhan Qurbani sees
actress Kenda Hmeidan dazzle as the daughter of an Arab clan who, in the aftermath of a bloody
gang war, plots against her male siblings to become the undisputed boss of the Berlin underworld.<\/p>\n

PATERNAL LEAVE (dir: Alissa Jung, Germany\/Italy) UK Premiere. Debut feature. A champion at
Berlin and BCN film festivals, it follows a teenage girl\u2019s journey to Italy\u2019s northern coast, seeking her
unknown biological father.<\/p>\n

SHAKESPEARE\u2019S THE TEMPEST (dir: Garret Replogle, USA) European Premiere. Debut feature. Star
Trek meets Shakespeare in this tale of a spaceship captain marooned on a desert planet who
orchestrates a series of events to confront the crew who betrayed him.<\/p>\n

SRISHTI (dir: Paul Antar, India) World Premiere. Debut feature. The story of a photographer, haunted
by childhood guilt, who travels to remote Himalayan Sector K to investigate a mysterious
phenomenon \u2013 this mystery\/drama highlights the plight of children forced to work trawling through
giant rubbish heaps in search of things that can be monetized.<\/p>\n

\n\tTAPE (dir: Bizhan Tong, UK\/Hong Hong) UK Premiere. Set in modern-day Asia, this bold reimagining
of Richard Linklater\u2019s cult classic sees three high school friends reunite, only to confront a harrowing
secret from their past.<\/p>\n

\n\tTHE PARTY\u2019S OVER (dir: Elena Manrique, Spain\/Belgium) UK Premiere. Debut feature. Beatriz Arjona
won \u201cBest Lead Actress\u201d Carmen Award for her role as a wealthy divorc\u00e9e in southern Spain whose
life is disrupted when a young Senegalese immigrant seeks shelter in her toolshed.<\/p>\n

\n\tWET MONDAY (dir: Justyna Mytnik, Poland). UK Premiere. Debut feature. When repressed trauma
from a sexual assault resurfaces, a teenage girl develops a strange fear of water. Thanks to a newfound friend, she confronts it in an unusual way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The\u00a0Raindance\u00a0Film Festival in London has unveiled the lineup for its 33rd edition, its biggest post-COVID pandemic edition. It…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4884,522,257,51485,51486,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-113879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-international","12":"tag-london","13":"tag-raindance","14":"tag-raindance-film-festival","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114533573876642337","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}