The Beginning

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The Scotland International Festival of Cinema (SIFC) is dedicated to providing a showcase for emerging talent in independent film. Our goal is to provide a forum in which up and coming filmmakers can connect with established industry professionals, to advance and promote their work, within an atmosphere supportive of independent cinema. 

It’s a well known fact that gaining acceptance into major film festivals has become increasingly more difficult for independent artists, not only in Scotland, but worldwide. This is due to the onslaught of better established and bigger budgeted production companies who now use film festivals as open markets to sell their products, not only for theatrical release, but to streaming platforms such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. Their use of expensive publicists and attorneys to push their mainstream “Hollywood” films into festivals leaves little room for the independent director and producer to have a voice.

The aim of SIFC is to ensure that burgeoning filmmakers, whose work is exemplary, can plant their unique flag in a market that caters to their art, in spit of budgetary hurdles, and allows access to the same advantages the “Big Boys and Girls” have always had. A serious venue securing a place for newer artists on the world stage, the Scotland International Festival of Cinema is an event catering to talented new filmmakers, affording them a chance to gain a foothold on terrain that wouldn’t otherwise be unavailable to them. To launch their art while plugging them into the same networking pipelines enjoyed by more established film companies. In short, Scotland is here to support the film voices of tomorrow.