History of SYFF

Formed as the Scottish Youth Film Festival in early 2015. The festival has run every year since.

2015

The inaugural Festival is held in Armadale Academy

Best Film - Darth Vader at Home

2016

Festival held in Armadale Academy

Best Film - Samantha Glamorous

2017

Festival held in Moving Image Archive, Glasgow

2017 winner
2017 Winner

Best Film - The Bear Necessity

2018

Festival held in Moving Image Archive, Glasgow

Best Film - James meet Isaac

Also in 2018, we ran our first separate film competition, What Scotland Means to Me. Watch the entry montages and winning films here

2019

Festival held at Edinburgh Climate Change Institute

From 2019, rather than have only one best film, we decided to award Best Films for each age category.

Best Films - Crime time (12 and Under), The Call (13-19)

2020

Festival broadcast online from Lyra in Craigmillar

Festival 2020 - Online Edition
Festival 2020 - Online Edition

Best Films - Scottish Whispers (12 and under) Stop/ Start (13-19)

With the pandemic came lockdown and our Home film competition where we asked Scotland’s young people to make a film with the theme of home.

2021

First hybrid festival from Edinburgh Climate Change Institute

Best Films - Scottish Bake Off (12 and Under), The Run Home (13-19)

The year COP 26 came to Glasgow and SYFF ran the COP TV project. We also opened a film competition called Change and the shortlisted films were shown at a special event in the Science Centre as part of the Official Cop 26 programme.

2022

Festival held at The Bridge, Dumfries

Best Films - Ready or Not (12 and Under), Strange Journey (13-19)

Our second climate related film competition, Films for our Future was run and the winners were presented with prizes at the premiere of our COP26 documentary ‘This is COPTV’