WOW FILM FESTIVAL
EVENTS 2026
Abercon 2026
Abercon, Aberystwyth’s community anime convention, celebrates the power of animation to bring people together. With stalls, games, animation workshops, and a cosplay competition, this is a fun, family friendly event for everybody.
Abercon’s theme this year is ‘myth and magic’.
Date & Time:
Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Sat 14/03, 10am-5pm
'The Shepherd and The Bear' in Bangor - Special introduction by Dr. Armelle Blin-Rolland
Join us in Bangor for our screening of The Shepherd and The Bear, introduced by Dr. Armelle Blin-Rolland (Bangor University).
Dr. Armelle Blin-Rolland is a Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at Bangor University. Her research and teaching focuses on narratives of environmental injustice by artists and activists across France and the francosphere, as well as the links between languages and ecologies, and how this can inspire and help us to rethink our relationship with the more-than-human world
Date & Time:
Pontio, Bangor: Sad 21.03, 4pm
'Manok' + Director Q&A
Join us for a Zoom conversation with Manok's director Yujin Lee to learn more about how they made their uplifting debut feature film.
Hosted by Helen Sandler from Aberration Cymru.
Speaker's Bio:
Yu-jin Lee studied Film at the Korea National University of Arts. In 2020, their short film Good Mother won the New Filmmaker Award at the Asiana International Short Film Festival and was showcased at numerous festivals that year. Their subsequent film Outing premiered at the Busan International Film Festival and won the Best Film Award at the Jeju Women’s Film Festival. Butch up! was selected for Five Films for Freedom 2023 at the BFI Flare: London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival and has been screening at international festivals. They consistently explored comedy and drama genres, with Manok marking their feature debut.
Date & Time:
Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Sat 28/03, 5pm
'Made in Wales' Shorts
Come watch some of the very best 'Made in Wales' shorts from talented Welsh/Wales-based filmmakers.
A FREE EVENT, booking required.
Date & Time:
Arad Goch, Fri 27/03, 6.30pm
'How Deep Is Your Love' + Q&A in Bangor
After the screening of the film in Bangor, join us for a post-film Q&A with Bethany Fleming, one of the scientists featured in the film, in conversation with Dr Craig Robertson (Bangor University).
Speakers' Bio:
Dr Bethany Fleming is a deep-sea ecologist studying the weird and wonderful animals that live in the abyss. She has recently completed my PhD at the University of Southampton where she studied patterns of biodiversity in the Pacific deep-sea and the impact of deep-sea mining on animal communities. Throughout her career she's had many amazing experiences from submersible dives to species discoveries. She is also affectionately known for coining the nickname “Barbie pig” for the iridescent pink sea cucumber (shown in the picture and featuring in the film).
Dr Craig Robertson is a Marine Biology Lecturer at Bangor University. A Bangor graduate in Applied Marine Biology, he completed a year-long research internship at NIOZ Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research on deep-sea bacterio-plankton, followed by an MSc in Marine Environmental Protection. He has worked across commercial marine science as a benthic taxonomist and offshore environmental scientist, designing seabed surveys worldwide, and completed a PhD on the ecological functioning of submarine canyons in the western North Atlantic.
Date & Time:
Pontio Arts & Innovation Centre, Fri 20/03, 5pm
'Super Nature' + Director Q&A in Aberystwyth
Join us in Aberystwyth for a special screening of Super Nature, a mesmerising, globe-spanning documentary directed by Ed Sayers.
Stay after the screening for a live conversation with Ed, exploring his creative process, the communal nature of the project and the ideas that shaped this extraordinary film. The Q&A will be hosted by Mars da Silva Saude, artist-filmmaker, researcher and lecturer on the MA Documentary: Landscape and Ecology at Aberystwyth University.
Speaker's Bio:
Ed Sayers is a London-based filmmaker and independent director with a wide-ranging career spanning commercials, branded content, music videos and documentary cinema. Over the years he has worked across formats and genres - from directing performances by artists like Robbie Williams and Take That, to producing ambitious branded events and campaigns, and helping shape international storytelling communities.
In 1999, Sayers founded the international Super 8 filmmaking competition 'Straight 8', which challenges filmmakers to create short films on a single roll of Super 8 film with no editing; a project that has grown into a celebrated global creative platform.
Super Nature is Sayers’ feature-length debut documentary: a globe-spanning, tactile exploration of our world today, assembled from Super 8 footage contributed by more than 40 collaborators across 25 countries. Shot exclusively on the analogue Super 8 format, the film offers an immersive, impressionistic encounter with landscapes, wildlife and human relations to the living world, inviting audiences to rethink how they see nature.
Mars da Silva Saude is an artist filmmaker and researcher engaging with 16mm film, landscape and place, documentation, speculative fiction, radical politics, and text(s), with short films and performances programmed in national and international festivals and art spaces. They teach on the MA Documentary: Landscape and Ecology programme at Aberystwyth University, and incorporate decolonial, degrowth, neurodivergent, and transfeminist approaches into their critical frameworks for analysing film and culture.
Date & Time:
Aberystwyth Arts Centre, Thu 26/03, 5.30pm
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WOW x DIFF Shorts
Created through the WOW × DIFF (Durban International Film Festival) collaboration, this co-curated short films strand pairs emerging filmmakers with fresh perspectives in a dynamic cross-continental dialogue between Wales and South Africa.
The screening will be followed by a conversation DIFF's co-curator Helene Naicker.
A FREE event, booking required.
Date & Time
Arad Goch, Sat 28/03, 6.30pm