Last September, Making Waves Film Festival organisers Roy Hanney and Yael Friedman attended the Film London Distributor Slate Days at Picturehouse Central. This two-day event is one of the key gatherings for film distributors and exhibitors, providing a valuable chance to see what’s in store for cinema screens over the next year and to build relationships with the people who make it happen.

For our latest Bursary Blog, they describe their experiences and benefits of attending the special preview event:

The event kicked off with presentations from various distributors, getting sneak peeks of some of the most exciting upcoming releases. It was brilliant to see trailers and clips that have never been shown publicly before, but the real value of the event for us came on Day Two, with a busy morning of speed networking.

This was a chance to meet face-to-face with specialist distributors, exchange ideas, and start building relationships that will help grow Making Waves’ programming in the years ahead. We had some fascinating conversations—covering everything from event screenings to Japanese cinema—and learned a lot about how the distribution side of the industry operates.

The experience highlighted the importance of getting to know the people behind the email addresses. Meeting in person makes a huge difference, and we feel much more connected to the distributors we spoke to, which will undoubtedly benefit our future programming. We’re particularly excited by the potential for collaborating on some special screenings that might fit with Portsmouth Comic Con or bring more focus on our plans to produce more event cinema in the future, hopefully creating unique experiences for Portsmouth audiences.

We want to say a huge thank you to Film London for organising such a valuable event, and to everyone we met. We’re looking forward to following up on the conversations we started and seeing how we can bring some of these exciting new films to Making Waves audiences in 2025 and beyond.

Find out more about Distributor Slate Days