British Film Institute CEO Ben Roberts and creative director of Picturehouse Clare Binns took to Edinburgh Film Festival’s Central Hall on Saturday for a keynote discussion on the future of British independent film.
Binns was asking Roberts about how the BFI spends its money — the organization has £150 million ($203m) to disburse over three years, much of it given to the organization via government grants and National Lottery revenue — and kicked off by discussing how difficult it is to get smaller projects off the ground and to a wide audience.
“We often forget to talk about the actors that have been discovered or platformed through lottery-funded or publicly funded films and gone on to be huge stars,” Roberts began. “Tom Holland, his second film was called How I Live Now [released in 2013] with the great Kevin Macdonald and funded with lottery money, [and] that [put] him on a particular path. Olivia Colman’s first standout work that moved her from sketch comedy to dramatic feature film was Paddy Considine’s [2011 film] Tyrannosaur. So I think there are many markers of success in a film.”
The pair soon came onto genre, specifically when Roberts was explaining that there’s a “misconception that a lot of money needs to be spent in order to create something that’s got value.” He said there are things “we have to be greater [at] in the U.K. as an independent sector.” Binns probed: “Which are?”
Roberts answered: “I don’t think we’re great at comedy… Obviously, [Edinburgh is] working with really strong comedies like this year, [like the opening night film] The Incomer. I’m not saying we don’t do it, but it’s also really a skill to do it well. And we know audiences love horror, and I think we can pull our punches in horror and comedy in independent film.”
Roberts and Binns covered a range of topics over the course of an hour and a half, including the BFI’s audience development fund, Escapes, as well as cinema chains and their own pricing models, support from the U.K.’s Department of Culture, Media and Sport, and promoting the value of cinema hubs as “vital community hubs that contribute significantly to the wider high street economy.”
Roberts later conceded about the BFI’s distribution model: “It’s a really complex model running a charity that’s got all these very big, expensive elements, but a relatively flat amount of funding from the government, and we’re the one organization that can’t apply for lottery money because we give it out. We support lots of other distributors with lottery funds as well.”
Binns even asked Roberts about the new U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham, whose first few weeks in charge has been marked by his push to drive political power out of London and up north. “We’ve got people quite distributed [across the U.K.] since COVID,” he said. “We’re London-centric insofar as the [BFI] IMAX is London, quite a few of our staff are headquartered in London. We actually have five buildings — two cinemas in London, an office building, and then two archive buildings that are not in London. They’re in other parts of England. Lottery money is brilliant because we are able to work at a U.K.-wide level, [and] we’ve got very clear and specific targets on how that money should be distributed.”
Roberts maintains that “you don’t have to design your film for commercial success.” He said that this year’s box office has demonstrated this plainly, and referenced James Harris and Mark Lanes’ Tea Shop Productions, a British production company that backed Curry Barker’s Obsession. “The number of original films [this year]… It’s been less IP-heavy, and should be [sending] a signal to everybody that you can get out there. It’s easy for me to say, sitting and running an organization: ‘Get out there and do it.’ I mean, the guys that made Obsession, two producers who own Tea Shop who never really had support from the BFI.”
He continued about Barker’s industry-shaking horror: “It’s grossed £20 million in the U.K. on a $750,000 budget… And they cut their teeth,” he added, explaining that Tea Shop earned industry experience by making shark movies.
Later in the session, Roberts and Binns took audience questions. A member of the audience asked: “Do you think cinema has almost become a sanctuary away from the AI slop on people’s phones, and that’s why there is a bit of a renaissance from the Gen Z audience [going to see films]?”
“Definitely, we’re seeing a lot more young people,” answered Binns about Picturehouse data. “But I think one of the most interesting things I found is that we’re working with the likes of Netflix and Amazon, Sky, and Disney, and they talk very much about fan events — fan events are where you get people who are watching something at home, and they all want to be together. And when we’ve done those events, it tends to be very young people coming in who want to be in the cinema because they don’t want to be at home on their own.”
“But certainly with Obsession and Backrooms and Spider-Man and The Odyssey,” she continued, “what we’ve always needed is just good content. If you’ve got good content week in, week out… [Right now] there’s three really good films [in cinemas] and people are coming back. And yes, I think the younger audience have an appetite for being together in the cinema. It’s very hopeful.”
Roberts jumped in on another audience question on AI: “I don’t think we’re anywhere near using AI for decision-making. I think there might be some productivity tools that we can use to make the application processes easier… We actually ask filmmakers on our application forms: ‘Have you used AI in this application?’”
“[But] we’re not keen to have a conversation that frames AI entirely as a negative space.”
The 2026 Edinburgh International Film Festival runs Aug. 13-19. Industry talks have included sessions with Christine Vachon, Ken Burns and Ewan McGregor.
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