We love a good punny name, and they don’t come much punnier than Pompeywood.
Pompeywood is a genre film festival, meaning it focuses on films from genres with strong and easily recognisable tropes, themes, or conventions. It’s best known as a horror film festival, but does include films from the sci-fi genre, thrillers, and even comedies.
All films must be short films (under 17 minutes), but there is also a category for trailers, and they show a couple of features towards the end as well. Anyone wanting to submit their own film will need it to be a short film, though.
The whole point of Pompeywood is to highlight the work of independent, low or no budget, filmmakers in Portsmouth and farther afield. In other words, this is a festival for people who make films for the love of it.
These film makers will have their work shown to an audience before taking part in a Question and Answer session afterwards, and of course, there are plenty of networking opportunities where people can swap tips and tricks and make new connections.
This will be the 4th year the festival has run, so it is becoming a regular fixture on any Portsmouth based filmmaker’s calendar.
Venue and Date
The festival takes place at the Wedgewood Rooms, which is a venue more commonly associated with stand-up comedy and music gigs, but is perfect for a film festival. Everyone knows it, and it is already set up to host large numbers of people.
The 2025 edition of Pompeywood will be held on August the 30th, with the final submission date for films on June 15th. Successful applicants will be informed on July 15th.
It’s only a one day festival, and really it only takes place in the afternoon and evening. But they do things properly, including handing out awards for various categories.
The day is laid out like this:
- Midday – Short film competition begins
- 3:20pm – Awards ceremony for short films
- 4:30pm – First feature film showing
- 6:30pm – Second feature showing
- 9:00pm – Exhibition of Evil – a collection of horror stories
- 11:00pm – End
That’s a lot of movie watching as you can see! Tickets can be bought from the Wedgewood Rooms website.