Soho Film Festival is an annual, feature-focused festival taking place in October, dedicated to original filmmaking that honours the great traditions of British and international cinema. While rooted in tradition, Soho Film Festival is not exclusively nostalgic. We actively seek original contemporary films that reinterpret classic cinematic values for modern audiences — works that feel timeless rather than trendy.

We accept short and feature-length films in the following genres only: Comedy, Drama, Romance, Thriller and Fantasy / Sci-Fi. Soho Film Festival is deliberately curated and selective. We view every submission in full and assess it on storytelling, performance, direction, and overall artistic integrity.

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Dear Filmmakers,

First of all, thank you very much for submitting your wonderful films to the Soho Film Awards!

We have thoroughly enjoyed watching and judging your work, and we were genuinely impressed by the quality, creativity and diversity of the films submitted. With so many outstanding productions to choose from, the judging process was extremely difficult.

When we opened the festival to short films — something we had initially decided not to do — we were delighted by the response. In fact, around two thirds of all submissions were short films, spanning an extraordinary range of genres and styles.

This presented us with a wonderful but rather difficult problem: how could we fairly recognise more of these exceptional short films than our single 'Best Short Film' category allowed?

After careful consideration, we decided that the fairest approach was to introduce additional categories specifically for short films. This has allowed us to recognise outstanding work within more focused genres and to give deserving filmmakers the recognition their films deserve.

So, if you submitted your film for Best Short Film, please don't be surprised if you find that you have won an award in a more specific category — such as Best Short Comedy, Best Short Drama, or another genre category.

We hope you will understand and welcome this decision. Our intention is to celebrate more of the exceptional filmmaking submitted to us, rather than allowing wonderful films to go unrecognised simply because of the sheer number of excellent entries.

If you have won an award, congratulations! We would be absolutely delighted to celebrate your achievement with you. Please note that being included in our Official Selection, while recognising your work as exceptional, does not guarantee its automatic inclusion in our screening program.

We are holding our first awards celebration in London next week, and shall follow the initial event with more in the coming weeks, as we simply cannot screen all winning works.

We would love you to join us if you are able to attend. Please get in touch with us if you have won and would like to come along and celebrate your work with the Soho Film Awards community.

Places are limited by the venue capacity, though, and are nearly gone! We promise we'll book a larger venue next time - we were not expecting such a great response in our first year! But we are delighted you shared your work with us!

If you would also like a lasting physical memento of your achievement, please get in touch to commission a personalised Soho Film Awards trophy commemorating your victory. Each trophy can be personalised to mark your specific award and film, creating a unique keepsake of your success at the festival.

Once again, thank you for sharing your work with us, and congratulations to all of our winners and filmmakers.

With warm regards,

SohoFilmAwards.com Team

9th Oct 2026