Welcome back to your monthly round-up from the ICO, featuring the latest opportunities for your cinema, festival or film society and industry highlights from the UK and beyond.
ICO News
- The final additions to the Spring Screening Days 2026 programme have been announced! In-person passes are sold out, but our online programme, taking place 16 to 22 March, means you don’t need to miss out. Titles include the quietly radical drama Love Me Tender, the outlandish black comedy The Last Viking, the offbeat animated fantasy ChaO, the psychological horror Exit 8, and more.
- Registration for the International Film Festival Network membership has reopened with a new subscription model and a new annual rate of just £100+VAT/€120 per year. All new members will start on 1 April 2026, with the next events and activities starting shortly afterwards.
- Last chance to book Uncommon Voices: Exploring Class in New British Cinema, a programme of short films on the working class experience in modern Britain. To screen at your venue and discuss in-person speaker opportunities, email bookings@independentcinemaoffice.org.uk.
- The ICO are seeking blog pitches from industry voices offering insight into film exhibition. Read over our blog guidelines and share a brief outline of your idea with info@independentcinemaoffice.org.uk.
- Looking for new opportunities? Check out our Jobs Board to find a range of open roles.
Resources, Opportunities and Events
- Help shape BFI FAN CON by submitting session ideas to the Open Call before 9 March. After 2024’s successful inaugural event, the second conference for BFI FAN members is coming to Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle upon Tyne from 7 to 9 September.
- Applications for CICAE’s renowned Arthouse Cinema Training are open. The 23rd edition, taking place in Berlin from 24 to 30 August 2026, will provide participants with practical tools, strategic insights, and international connections to strengthen and future-proof their cinemas. To get a sense of what to expect, you can read ICO Assistant Film Programmer Heather Bradshaw’s account of attending last year on the ICO Blog.
- Kirsten Geekie, the BFI FAN Young Audience Champion, has published a series of Young Audiences Case Studies that expand on successful BFI FAN projects from across the UK.
- For those aged 16 to 19, the BFI Film Academy: Film Programming Specialist Course is accepting applications until 28 Feb.
- Historic England and ACE are delivering Carbon Reduction Training for the Heritage Sector, designed to support organisations in navigating the processes and steps involved to meet their net-zero targets.
- Watersprite Film Festival 2026 is returning to Cambridge from 6 to 8 March. Tickets are completely free and can be reserved for online or in-person attendance.
- The BFI National Lottery Screen Heritage Fund is accepting applications for Project, Resilience, and Skills funding to support the UK’s public screen heritage sector.
- Accreditation is now open for BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival until Friday 13 March 2026.
- On Wednesday 11 March, Film Hub North are hosting the next instalment of BFI FAN Green Hour. This session is focused on how cinemas can partner with community-owned renewable energy projects to reduce costs, lower carbon emissions, and build local, sustainable futures.
- REACH: Strategic Audience Development Open Sessions are now available as watchbacks until 31 March. All members of BFI FAN across the UK can gain insight into membership schemes, building and retaining new audiences, and social media platform strategy.
- Expressions of interest applications for the first UK Town of Culture competition are still being accepted until 31 March.
- Oska Bright Film Festival, focused on films made by or featuring people with learning disabilities or autism, is back from 28 March to 2 April!
Good Reads
- Johnathan Ilott, the new Head of Programming at Showroom Cinema, Sheffield, shared 5 things you only know if you’re an Independent Cinema Programmer with Exposed Magazine.
- The First Independent Cinema in Ethiopia, Videobet, opened in February, focusing on repertory screenings and community gatherings centred on film.
- Subscription fatigue means young people are opting for physical media and community cinema experiences, argues the Los Angeles Times in its case study of Vidiots – an independent movie theatre and video rental store.
- Criterion remembers Frederick Wiseman and his ability to allow his own curiosity to guide him.
- Oscar-Nominated filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania spoke to Deadline about her difficulty getting The Voice Of Hind Rajab distributed, and the impact it has had since successfully making it to cinemas.
- Architectural Digest spoke to Kirsten Stewart about her new project: the restoration of the historic Highland Theatre in LA, and her aim to turn it into a community space for adventurous programming.
- Despite being the UK’s leading film and TV hub outside London, Liverpool’s creative scene is seeing DIY cinema groups emerge due to a lack of independent venues.
- London’s closed Catford Mews cinema is due to reopen later this year, under management from The Castle Cinema in Hackney as The Catford Castle.
- With Oscar-nominated The Secret Agent filming key scenes in a Brazilian cinema, Curzon argues that cinemas are the perfect settings for period films to reflect on the culture and politics of the time.
- With February being the month of love (and all its attendant complications), thanks to Saint Valentine, Dazed shared their list of the most toxic on-screen romances.
- Continuing the theme, A Rabbit’s Foot argued that the cinema is a space for lovers by sharing stories where cinemas serve as a sanctuary for adolescent experiences.
- In an overstimulating landscape of constant news, Little White Lies argues for letting it all out in the safety of the dark by crying in the cinema.
Header image: Spring Screening Days welcome desk at BFI Southbank, taking place again in March