The first events have been announced for the 8th annual Sea Change Festival - Scotland’s only annual film festival celebrating female filmmaking talent. Only screening films made by female and non-binary directors, the festival will take place from the 18 - 20 September on the beautiful and remote Hebridean island of Tiree (over 80 miles away from the nearest permanent cinema).
Sea Change will celebrate the 100th anniversary of pioneering animator Lotte Reineger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed - the oldest surviving animated feature film in the world - with a special event from The Cabinet of Living Cinema. Enchanted Creatures & How to Become One celebrates Reineger’s exquisite hand-crafted silhouette animation, with flying horses, dancing insects and enchanted islands brought to life through live music and sound effect making.
Contemporary female animation talent will also be showcased at the festival, with a screening of Spanish filmmaker Isabel Herguera’s Sultana’s Dream. Taking its inspiration from a feminist sci-fi short story written in Bengal in 1905, Inés sets out on a voyage of discovery around India in search of Ladyland, the Utopian land of women.
Sea Change will team up with Scotland’s Catalan Film Festival to welcome renowned Catalan director Judith Colell. Judith - currently President of the Catalan Film Society- will introduce special screenings of her acclaimed new feature Frontera/ Frontier in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Tiree. Set in 1943, Frontera tells the little-known story of a group of Pyrenees villagers who defied the rules of Franco’s regime to save hundreds of refugees arriving from France.
In an international island collaboration between Tiree and Cuba, Scottish filmmaker and festival director of Havana Glasgow Film Festival Eirene Houston will visit to screen her new feature documentary Life Is Dance. Following six ordinary Cubans with one thing in common – their love of dance - this is a story full of colour and music, disappointment and joy. The special screening will feature live Cuban dancing and Cuban cocktails.
Celebrating Tiree’s reputation as one of the watersports capitals of the UK, Sea Change 2026 will also collaborate with London Surf Film Festival for the first time. Sea Change will screen some of the best short films from LSFF’s long-running Women of The Sea showcase, which funds female filmmakers from the UK and beyond to tell diverse stories of women in surf culture.
Away from the big screen, Sea Change festival invites its audience to fully embrace its unique island home with daily wild swim sessions led by Wild Bathing Oban, a beachside sauna, pilates, yoga and ceilidh classes, Gaelic walks and activities with Tiree’s legendary Ranger Hayley, a shadow puppet workshop and a community-run cafe selling local produce including Tiree Tea and Hebridean Roast coffee.
Alongside the public festival, the Sea Change Development Lab - for women and non-binary people at any stage in their film and screen industries career - will return from 15 - 18 September, with a focus on “connection, collaboration, community, and change”.
Screen Argyll’s Jen Skinner said: “We are so excited to share brilliant films and welcome wonderful people into our communities, for this year’s Sea Change. Our main weekend of films will be held on the Isle of Tiree, which is
the heart of our festival. We are delighted to be building on our year-round community cinema network, who will also host screenings in their island communities in the build-up to the festival. There will be our usual daily swims and the opportunity to explore our unique landscape and island culture. We are all about bringing communities together through film, I can’t wait to share cinema, connections and Tiree with audiences this year. See you there!”
Early bird tickets for the 2026 festival are on sale now on the Sea Change website.
The full programme for Sea Change 2026 will be announced in late July.
Previous guests at the festival - which showcases new and archive films made by women and non-binary people across the world- have included director Carol Morley, Shallow Grave star Kerry Fox and award-winning Orkney writer Amy Liptrot.
Sea Change is run by the Tiree-based Screen Argyll and supported by Screen Scotland. Film Hub Scotland fund the Screen Argyll Network.