The programme for the sixteenth annual Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival has been announced today, 26 March 2026. Running from 30 April– 3 May 2026 in Hawick in the Scottish Borders, the programme brings together work by international and local artists working in the mediums of film and sound.
Among the highlights of the 2025 festival is a screening on Saturday 2 May of An Incomplete Calendar - new feature about oil by Sanaz Sohrabi an Iranian-born artist (currently based at Concordia University, Montreal). Sohrabi’s new film explores the untold story of Rhymes and Songs for OPEC, a record made in 1980 marking 20 years since the founding of the organisation (Bagdad, 1960). Made by the Concert Choir of Central University of Venezuela the record included examples of folk and popular music from each of the member countries.
The festival opens on the evening of 30 April with the UK Premiere of Waves Turn, a 16mm feature by Austrian filmmaker, Josephine Ahnelt, which tracks the lives of five new mothers over their first year of parenthood. Bringing the festival to a close on the evening of 3 May will be the UK Premiere of Stone and Mountain by Japanese filmmaker Tetsuya Maruyama (currently based in Brazil) who will be joined by Turner Prize-nominated artist Luke Fowler (live improvised sound).
This year’s festival exhibition programme includes recent work by Lebanon-based artist Ghassan Salhab. The centrepiece will be his epic Contretemps (shown on a loop) – a frontline dispatch on the Beirut uprisings of 2019 – alongside a screening of the more recent No Title documenting the devastation of southern Beirut and South Lebanon by Israeli airstrikes.
Other exhibiting artists are American filmmaker, Jade Wong, Paris-based Canadian film director Matthew Lancit and Scottish-based Cameroonian textile designer-sculptor-filmmaker Kialy Tihngang who won the prestigious Newbery Medal (awarded annually to the leading student graduating from The Glasow School of Art) in 2021. Focus Artists this year will be Nada El-Omari and Malic Amalya.
Alchemy 2026 also sees the incorporation of a major local initiative Oor Ain Film Archive – a film preservation project funded by the BFI Screen Heritage Fund. An online mediathèque of archive films from across the Scottish Borders (some of which have been recently restored) will be launched, opening up this rich seam of documentaries to an international audience. Across the festival people will also have the chance to take part in workshops splicing, animating and making a “People’s Cut” of a newly restored 16mm version of the 1966 Hawick Pictorial.
The full programme can be found on the Alchemy Film and Moving Festival website.
"Alchemy's 16th festival edition embodies the international solidarity we're proud to be known for,” says Director, Rachael Disbury. “Across all levels of the programme there are new works responding to the acute global crises we're facing. This is a time of deep uncertainty and anger, and these films reflect this. We want our event to be one of lasting connections, a place where people can feel and enact a joy in comradeship without the films themselves having to be 'feel good', all within a distinctly Scottish Borders context."
Sambrooke Scott, Head of Audience Development at Screen Scotland said: “Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival brings together international artists and local audiences in a uniquely open and collaborative way. This year’s programme is both timely and thought-provoking - reflecting the complex world around us while creating opportunities for genuine connection, exchange and shared experience across borders. The launch of the Oor Ain Film Archive underscores the festival’s deep commitment to place, preserving and sharing stories from the Scottish Borders with audiences at home and internationally. It is a truly special and welcoming festival and it’s fantastic to be able to support their work.”