Manchester Film Festival at Odeon Great Northern

Manchester Film Festival is back this March with a huge selection of UK and world premieres, Oscar contenders, and curated favourites scooped up from the likes of Cannes and Sundance film festivals. The nine-day event runs primarily at Manchester’s Odeon Great Northern from 14 – 23 March, with selected screenings at HOME and Factory International at Aviva Studios for the first time this year.

2025’s festival opens with a special presentation of Peter Cattaneo’s adaptation of the bestselling The Penguin Lessons starring Steve Coogan, which screens in the UK for the first time. The film follows an Englishman’s personal and political awakening as he adopts an orphaned penguin in 1970s Argentina and is billed as a poignant true story about an unlikely bond.

Joining Cattaneo’s film is Santosh, a dark crime drama about a widow who inherits her husband’s job as a police constable in Northern India. The Hindi-language film has been selected as the UK’s submission for the Best International Feature at this year’s Academy Awards.

Amongst the rest of the 37 feature films, our hot tip is to seek out Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cloud — the director of Pulse and Cure has been one of the leading lights of Japanese cinema for a couple of decades now, and his latest mystery has been quietly gaining buzz from people in the know. 

Meanwhile, on Saturday 15 March, former Saturday Night Live cast member Kyle Mooney has directed apocalyptic sci-fi comedy horror Y2K. Produced by hip indie studio A24, and starring the likes of Jaeden Martell, Rachel Zegler and Fred Durst, the film imagines a 1999 New Year’s Eve Party where the machines really do rise up against humanity.

Other intriguing sounding titles include Danny Turkiewicz’ Stealing Pulp Fiction, which stars Matt Adams, Jason Alexander and Cazzie David as a group of film fans trying to steal Quentin Tarantino’s personal print of his 1994 masterpiece; and My Dead Friend Zoe, a drama featuring Ed Harris and Morgan Freeman about a U.S. military veteran taking care of her grandfather who is haunted by the presence of her deceased friend. 

As always there’s also a focus on local filmmaking, with premieres of films such as addiction drama Departures and music-world set Kid accompanied by a strand of short films from the North West. Filmmakers both working and aspiring will also want to look out for industry events and workshops to be announced nearer to the festival.