Internationally recognised art and literary critic, writer and cultural producer. Published in ELLE, Glamour, Esquire and Cosmopolitan; member of the Union of Writers.
Maria Bregman is a film critic and documentary director.
The Cambridge Film Festival is one of the longest-running film festivals in the UK. It was founded in 1977 and is run by the Cambridge Film Trust, a registered charity. Its 42nd edition runs from 19 to 26 October 2023 at the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse, with a programme of more than 100 titles: UK premieres of new features, classic retrospectives, documentaries, European discoveries, family films, short films and prize-winners from international festivals.
Opening night
The festival opens with Typist Artist Pirate King, Carol Morley’s film about the artist Audrey Amiss, with Monica Dolan in the lead role. Morley attends the opening night. It is a fitting start for a festival that cares about British independent cinema and about artists whose work was overlooked in their lifetime.
Powell + Pressburger – Through the Looking Glass
A major retrospective strand is devoted to Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It is part of the BFI’s UK-wide season marking the duo’s work this autumn, and Cambridge gives it its own angle: the festival’s selection looks at the roles of women in their films and at the set design, costume and partnership behind their post-war fantasy worlds. The strand includes The Tales of Hoffmann and I Know Where I’m Going! on the big screen.
A highlight of the strand is Sally Potter’s Orlando (1992), with the director present for a Q&A after the screening. Potter has spoken about her friendship with Michael Powell and about how his films shaped her own way of thinking about identity and history. Seeing Orlando in this company, between the Archers’ films, makes the line of influence visible.
International highlights
The festival brings films that have already made their mark at major festivals. Among them:
The Taste of Things by Tran Anh Hung, which won Best Director at Cannes this year;
Poor Things by Yorgos Lanthimos, winner of the Golden Lion in Venice;
All of Us Strangers by Andrew Haigh;
Shortcomings, the directing debut of Randall Park;
Chicken for Linda!, an animated feature by Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach;
Creatura by the Catalan director Elena Martín Gimeno. The festival also runs a dedicated Camera Catalonia strand.
Documentaries, environment and identity
The programme is organised in strands that let an audience follow a theme through the week: Voices of Earth for films on the environment, as well as Creativity and Identity. Documentaries include Isa Willinger’s Plastic Fantastic, about the plastics industry and its effect on our lives and environment, and Lidia Duda’s Fledglings, which follows three visually impaired children at a boarding school in Poland.
Asif Kapadia
This year the festival presents its Outstanding Contribution to Cinema Award to Asif Kapadia, the director and documentarian behind Senna, Amy and Diego Maradona, alongside a retrospective of his work. Kapadia’s documentaries are built almost entirely from archive footage, and seeing several of them together shows how consistently he has worked with that method.
Youth Lab
The festival’s Youth Lab brings together young people aged 16 to 24 for discussions, workshops and talks with film professionals. Its members form the jury for the Youth Lab Jury Award, one of the festival’s prizes.
The Punt Awards
The festival’s awards carry the name of the Cambridge punt. Golden Punt Awards go to the best fiction feature and the best documentary feature, and the Crystal Punt Award to the best short film.
Update, after the festival: the 2023 winners were Creatura by Elena Martín Gimeno (Golden Punt, Best Fiction Feature), Pure Clean Water by Tony Eva (Golden Punt, Best Documentary Feature) and The Snip by Ben S. Hyland (Crystal Punt, Best Short Film). The Youth Lab Jury Award went to Fledglings by Lidia Duda.
Why it matters
Cambridge is not London, and that is its strength. Over eight days, the city-centre Arts Picturehouse hosts new British films, festival prize-winners and restored classics, often with their makers in the room. For film lovers in the East of England, it remains one of the most important weeks of the cultural year.
This article was updated on 11 September 2026 with the festival’s award winners and corrected programme details. Sources: Cambridge Film Festival, Cambridge Independent (3 October 2023).
