The LIDF is the UK’s largest independent documentary festival. Since 2007 the festival has worked to ensure that London is host to exciting, diverse, challenging and inspiring films from every corner of the globe.

The festival is committed to providing the highest quality platform for international documentaries and their directors. It does this by working with globally recognised partners and venues, such as the British Museum, the Barbican Centre, and the TATE Modern. It also provides a year-round programme of screenings and other events.

LIDF has always sought to create conversations in film, teasing out the issues from documentaries that offer a considered view of the world today. This year, the LIDF is encouraging the conversation to continue, through international Video-on-Demand partnerships.

Successful submissions for LIDF will from now on be offered the opportunity to be seen by a passionate community of online doc-lovers as well as the industry professionals and enthusiasts who attend the festival. With set-top boxes and connected TV now a reality, the way we consume media is changing at an impossibly fast rate. Increasingly it is the viewer who decides what they want to watch and when and that’s why LIDF is proud to offer their filmmakers the opportunity to engage with a global community beyond the festival itself.

We look to support new and innovative filmmaking talent, and to ask filmmakers to participate in the ‘conversations’ and debates that run alongside the screenings. 2012 will see new and significant additions to the festival and new award categories.

Submissions can be via Withoutabox or the LIDF Official Entry Form

We look forward to seeing your films.

Official Entry Form

Frequently Asked Questions

Entry Regulations

The LIDF is the UK’s largest independent documentary festival providing a platform for radical and groundbreaking output from around the globe. In 2011 the festival is scheduled to run for 10 days between 5th May and 15th May.

We look to support new and innovative filmmaking talent, and to ask filmmakers to participate in the ‘conversations’ and debates that run alongside the screenings. 2011 will see new and significant additions to the festival and new award categories.

We look forward to seeing your films.

Official Entry Form

Frequently Asked Questions

Entry Regulations

If you would prefer to submit through Withoutabox, please click the link below.

LIDF09 filmmakers, panel members, industry insiders and the LIDF09 team came together for opening night drinks at the Horse Hospital this evening. The event was a chance to celebrate a successful first day, for ideas to be shared, old friends to meet, introductions to be made, and most importantly, conversations to be had.

Photos of the evening are up on our flickr page. In fact, we had so much fun we somehow managed to lose an hour.

Events such as this are scattered throughout the festval, and are a great chance to meet and debate with the filmmakers.

As a part of the event, LIDF shows four films (Kids, Escape, Inflation, From Birth to Sixty) made by twelve Pakistani students from various educational institutions in Karachi.

Additionally, there will be a screening of the winner of the National Short Documentary Film Competition 2009 (a collaboration between the LIDF; the British High Commission, Pakistan; and Geo TV), alongside with Red Burqa, The Sacred Goats and My Sin. 

To find out more about the event, click here.

To book tickets for this event, click here.

LIDF is not just simply a film festival. It is a discourse that engages a wide range of audiences. We are always looking at new projects and new ways to start conversations, because isn’t conversation where all good things start?  This year we open a series of interviews with directors, producers and actors so our audiences can engage with films beyond ‘lights up.’ To view our continuously growing section with conversations, click here.

To join the conversation and comment on films, interviews and forthcoming film reviews, register with LIDF website. To receive the latest updates on the LIDF festival and for information on film screenings all year around, subscribe to the LIDF email newsletter.

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