Due to several reasons, including the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic and the uncertainty that it places us in as a fully independent festival, we have decided not to hold Underwire Festival in 2020. With the current climate, our first priority needs to be the health of our team, filmmakers and audiences and we need to think responsibly about creating and delivering events.
We’re devastated but know this is the right decision at this time. Underwire Festival started in 2010 as an entirely independent, volunteer led event. It’s now grown to be the biggest festival of its kind, supporting and platforming female talent across ten days.
The amount of films we screen, events we put on, submissions we receive and community around the festival grows every year, and it’s endlessly inspiring. The festival has now grown to a point where we feel it’s necessary to take a step back, strategise, take on board our audiences’ and partners’ feedback and make sure we can deliver a festival that supports women making films as much as possible, but also supports and enables the team that make Underwire Festival possible in a fair way.
So we’ve decided to give ourselves the time to do that and make Underwire really flourish in 2021. We will announce more details about Underwire Festival 2021 in due course, and we will be working on a programme to keep the Underwire community going. Stay tuned.
Everyone who has submitted a film for this year’s edition will be refunded.
If you have any questions, please do get in touch.
Stay safe, and much love from Team Underwire x