Supporting Screen Careers at the Into Film Festival

The Into Film Festival 2025 came to a fabulous close last week, bringing an end to three and a half weeks of incredible screenings and special events all around the UK. 

As the Into Film Festival takes place alongside Discover! Creative Careers Month, as well as free screenings and celebrating all things film, we also use the opportunity to shine a light on screen industry careers, holding a number of special events that shine a light on the many different careers available, and giving young people a chance to explore those avenues with hands-on workshops and first-hand encounters with industry professionals.

Young BAFTA Showcase

One of the key events in the Into Film Festival is our annual collaboration with BAFTA, which sees us team up to host several careers panels with screen industry professionals. Taking place at BAFTA HQ in Piccadilly, London, the sessions are attended by young people from around the UK, ensuring that young talent from all corners of the nation has an opportunity to benefit from unique events like this. This year we had schools travel from as far afield as The Wirral, Newport, and even from West Lothian in Scotland.

The morning session's panel comprised of Carly Brown (Editor), Theo Williams (Director), and Nigel Twumasi (Author and founder of manga-based creative agency Mayamada). The trio offered their advice on storytelling and the creative process, and gave guidance on how young people can follow in their footsteps and carve out a path into the industry.

"The key starting point is doing something, and then making that thing be known", said Twumasi. "Show people what you're doing. ‘This is what I do, here is me doing it, I'm proving I can do it'. That will make all the difference. You can sit and talk about what you want to do until the cows come home, but the moment you show people ‘Here's what I have done', people will be willing to help. If you have that ability to do something and show it, you can make your own starting point."

Editor Carly recalled her first film, emphasising that simply making something is a good first step. "My first film was at school. There was a theatre show, and I decided to make a behind-the-scenes film of the production. Everyone loved it, and it was just a fun little film project, just me filming my friends. But then I felt like ‘Huh, I've made something here' and found that I'd learnt a lot."

"The hardest part is believing in your own value, especially in the creative industries", Twumasi continued, recounting how he left his job as a software engineer to pursue his dream. "You will be surprised. The thing you do, that you might take for granted? Other people need it. And if people need it, there's value in that. Remember, you don't need to be perfect, but recognise the value in what you do."

The second panel saw Fred Hoffman (Art Director and Co-Founder of Newfangled Games), Nosa Eke (Writer/Director) and Shanaz Dulaimy (Editor) offering further advice to an enthusiastic group of young creatives. 

Hoffman, who runs his own video game development studio, was keen to echo earlier advice about being proactive, recounting how one seemingly innocuous decision in school led him down a path he never would have expected.

"One of the key reasons why I'm here in this dream position is because of a series of saying ‘yes' to things, without having any idea of where those 'yesses' might lead", explained Hoffman, "I can trace back every single positive thing that's happened in my career to saying ‘yes' one time when I was 16, to a random extra-curricular pattern design brief."

"We were doing a really boring project which involved drawing peppers. But someone said ‘These peppers would make a really good pattern design, do you want to do this extra pattern design module?" And I reluctantly said yes. And that led me to doing digital illustration, which led to be doing t-shirt design, which led to me doing t-shirt design for nerds, which led to me having games designers buying and wearing my illustrations, which led to those designers reaching out to me and asking for me to do art for their games, which led to my first games credit, which led to me opening my own game studio!"

Hoffman also spoke about confidence, and the importance of simply having a go. "I hear it a lot that people have these stories they want to tell, or these worlds they want to build, but they catch themselves and stop themselves, saying 'I'm not good enough at art', or 'I don't know enough to be able to do it right'. So do it badly! You only learn by doing these things. Your first ones are going to be bad. Bite the bullet and do bad art first, and allow yourself to get better."

Gavin Strange, a director and designer at Aardman, who delivered two TED talk-style sessions across the day, also spoke about how crucial it is to nurture your creative spark. "Like many creatives, I don't stop being creative when I finish work. When I'm not doing that, I make all the stuff that nobody asked for. No one asked for it! Nobody commissioned it, nobody wants to see. Well, I want to see it! I want to learn, I want to grow, I want to develop skills, sometimes I just want to get better. Don't wait to be asked. Don't wait for permission, or for someone to ask you to put it into the world. You have the power to do so."

I do things to spite this invisible, fictional person that didn't ask me, or didn't commission me. And it's so joyous! You'll find this sense of agency, and it also gives the perception that you're someone who does stuff."

Careers at the Into Film Festival

Elsewhere around the UK, we held a number of special careers-focused events, giving young people a chance to learn more about the many varied roles available in the screen industries, and to discover hidden secrets about how films are made.

In Glasgow and Edinburgh, we had screenings of recent horror film 28 Years Later, where we were joined by Robbie Jones, a drone camera operator who worked on the film, who was able to give young people an insight into a relatively new realm of camerawork.

Also in Scotland, were delighted to be joined at a screening Grow by the film's director John McPhail and actor Sanjeev Kohli, offering their insights into the making of the new family comedy.

In Manchester, actor Letitia Wright joined us for a screening of her directorial debut Highway to the Moon, speaking about the film's themes of knife crime, the importance of positive Black representation, and her striking career to date.

Also in Manchester, we held several Foley workshops, allowing young people the chance to see the often unexpected ways in which sound effects for film are made with everyday household objects. Attendees were given the opportunity to try their own hand at producing live sound effects alongside an iconic scene from Jurassic Park.

In Wales, actor Matthew Rhys joined us to perform acclaimed one-man play Playing Burton to over 300 young people from across south Wales, and joined us for a special Q&A session afterwards.

As ever, we were delighted to have given so many young people the opportunity to learn more about screen industry careers, and we hope many will have been inspired to pursue their own futures in this vibrant industry.

Keep your eyes peeled for our next programme of free screenings, which will take place between 6-27 March 2026. Bookings will go live in January, so make sure you're subscribed to our mailing to be the first to secure your places!

The Into Film Festival is possible thanks to the support of Cinema First and multiple partners across the cinema sector.