Hello, I’m Alexander Griffiths, the director and founder of the Tir Ddraig Film Festival.
TDFF is a brand new film festival, taking place in Cardiff, the capital city of Wales!
A beautiful part of the world, overflowing with talented filmmakers! Cardiff has been the home of many important festivals; IRIS, Cardiff Mini Film Festival, and IVFAF. Great festivals that I have had the opportunity to be involved with in one form or another.
The idea of running a film festival came to me while running a cinema club at university, a club that started as small group of unhinged film enthusiasts but soon grew to become the biggest club at the university. Screening films for people who appreciate the artform was a great joy to our gang, and we always looked forward to watching movies together on Tuesday night, followed by drinks and rigorous debate on what we’ve just seen. Working at The International Vampire Film Festival when it was hosted in Cardiff was another important stepping stone. Seeing how it all worked behind the scenes, was a great experience, but not nearly as great as watching new short films and feature films, alongside the hardworking filmmakers who had laboured over them. I didn’t sleep much that week, as I was out late every night, learning everything I could from these talented individuals.
Being a filmmaker myself, I have known the pain that comes with the festival circuit! It can be difficult enough getting together the money to enter films into festivals. The expense of running a festival means that even affordable festivals run up high submission entry costs, something that most indie filmmakers can’t afford these days! I was also painfully aware of how few awards there were to go around at each of these festivals, so even if your project was selected, it wouldn’t benefit you much more than the bragging rights. My goal with this festival is to attempt to remedy some of those issues. Keeping submission costs as low as possible and having a variety of awards to offer the filmmakers. It’s the first year, so we’re still finding our way, but fingers crosses, nothing goes too wrong!
If you’re reading this, thank you for taking an interest in our festival, we love film and can’t wait to share it with as many people as possible! We respect the work of indie filmmakers and hope that this festival can honour your work as much as it deserves!
See you in November!
– Alexander
TIR DDRAIG FILM FESTIVAL 