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The 2023 Into Film Festival closed with a bang and a flurry of feathers on Friday morning, with six simultaneous pupil premieres of Aardman's Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget taking place across the UK.
The film is the long-awaited sequel to 2000's Chicken Run - still the highest grossing stop motion film of all time - and comes from multi award-winning studio Aardman, who have also given us beloved favourites such as Wallace & Gromit and Shaun the Sheep. The film was directed by Sam Fell (ParaNorman, Flushed Away), who joined us at Cineworld Leicester Square to introduce the film - and brought along some of the actual character models used in the film!
Introducing the film, Fell gave some background on the film, teasing the next adventure of Ginger, Rocky, and the rest of Aardman's feathered friends, and also spoke about the painstaking animation process, offering advice on the merits of stop motion to the young audience of passionate film fans. "This film took three years to make", explained Fell, "but you can make something fun in an afternoon! This is the high end, but all you need is a stop motion app on your phone, a simple tripod to hold your phone still, and some clay or LEGO to move a small bit at a time. And then just practice, practice, practice!"
This film took three years to make, but you can make something fun in an afternoon!
Sam Fell, Director of Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget
Pupil premieres of Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget also took place in Belfast, Bristol, Cardiff, Glasgow, and Greenwich, with many hundreds of young people enjoying the chance to catch the Aardman sequel on the big screen. Dressed as the infamous Chicken Run chickens, delighted pupils met special guests, including in Bristol, the home of Aardman, where an Aardman animator brought along some puppets from the film.
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget will be released in cinemas and launch on streaming platform, Netflix, on December 15.
The Into Film Festival is the largest event of its kind in the world, and the 2023 edition hosted over 330,000 attendees, and 2,500 screenings and events, across 500 cinemas. These included special previews, showings of recent releases, and airings of cinematic classics, with a number of special guests and film industry professionals on hand to introduce events and hold special Q&A sessions with young audiences.
Elsewhere in the Festival, we were thrilled to be joined by director Molly Manning Walker at a screening of her film, How to Have Sex. Dealing with issues around sex and consent, Manning Walker's film is an incredibly important one, and we were delighted she was able to join us for a post-screening Q&A, especially in front of an exclusively teenage audience, for whom the film is sure to resonate most with.
Keep an eye out for further Into Film Festival highlights coming soon!
